Bata, the shoe maker, is developing new small and medium enterprise (SME) nodes in West Bengal where the company will act as a facilitator. According to P M Sinha, the outgoing Chairman of the company,“ Madam Banerjee has said 55,000 SME units are closed in West Bengal, We have a commitment of Rs 100 crore for the state, so near our factory site we will develop new SME nodes where we will have control on designs, quality, procurement and other divisions. Also we are expanding in our factory internally. We have replaced a lot of modules in our existing factory which has ability to manufacture new designs for the brand and we have very big plans going forward. We have put machines for industrial production and each factory is specialized in each segment like certain designs etc which is improving productivity.”
Last year Bata expended Rs 64 crore from its capex plan and this year too it is also looking at aggressive expansion in the metro and Tier I cities, which drives major revenue growth for the company. At present it has 1250 stores and it expects to add another 70-80 stores in this calendar year. The company has seen three times more sales in large store formats and plans to take up more projects in this segment. It has opened a 10,000 sft store in Baroda and 7,000 sft store in Bangalore. Its average large sized store is of 3000 sft. Bata is now coming up with new design line every three months.
