Rivals ready to beat Wal-Mart heat

Domestic retail majors have their scripts ready to counter the Bharti-Wal-Mart juggernaut.

Both Pantaloon and Shoppers' Stop are eyeing opportunity presented by airport retail. Shoppers' has signed a joint venture with the Nuance group, while Pantaloon has tied up with Alpha.

The Future group (Pantaloon), the biggest retail player at present, has announced plans to diversify into hospitality, contract farming, healthcare and even outdoor media.

The Pantaloon Retail board has also okayed an increase in borrowing limit from Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore.

The K Raheja group has diversified beyond the departmental store format, Shoppers' Stop, through which it earned its spurs.

The group, which now has a presence in various speciality retail formats like home (Home Stop), books and music (Crossword) as well as hypermarkets (Hypercity), is banking on licensing agreements with international brands to bring in the differentiation in a fast changing retail scenario.

The company has already introduced brands like Mothercare and MAC to India and is said to be looking at increasing the number of licensee and high end brands in its portfolio.

"We have a number of operational formats, with a existing loyal base," Shoppers' Stop CEO Govind Shrikhande said.

The company plans to increase its floor space coverage from 1 million sq ft to more than 3.6 million sq ft in the Shopper's Stop format, by 2010.

Similar growth is planned for all other formats as well. "We believe that there is space for at least 5 to 6 large players in the market," Shrikhande said.

Over the past year, the Future group has diversified into several unrelated categories such as insurance and other non-banking financial services, in addition to launching its own real estate fund and mall management company.

This, says Kishore Biyani, chief executive officer, Future group, is his way of ensuring that he manages to get the largest share of the customers wallet "� both the spending and the savings.

The company is also rolling out several speciality format outlets such as Home Town, Collection i and Depot. The group recently entered the hospitality sector through an agreement with Blue Foods to set up its own restaurants as well as food courts.

Piramyd Retail, which has so far been present in lifestyle retail (Piramyd) and food and grocery retail (Tru Mart), has said it is evaluating entering other retail formats through partnerships.

So far, the group has been largely focused on the western part of India and is moving closer to a more pan-India presence.

Trent, which is a Tata group company, has a network of department stores under Westside and hypermarkets under Star City along with a presence in books and music retail through Landmark.

The Tatas recently tied up with Australian retailer Woolworth to launch Croma, an electronics retail venture.

Reliance, which set up its first food and grocery outlet last month, is believed to be targeting a presence in 67 cities by June 2007 across formats ranging from hypermarkets to speciality retail to convenience stores and luxury retail.