Country Chicken, an Australian chain of fast food restaurants, is planning to enter the Indian market with around 300 outlets by 2015, to be set up at an investment of around Rs 200 crore.
The company has tied up with Chennai-based Star Quick Service Restaurants (P) Ltd as a master franchisee for its nationwide central processing plants and outlets in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Delhi and Haryana.
“We have plans to set up around 300 outlets through franchisee route in India by 2015. Our plan is to build the brand in India around the concept of healthy and dry chicken,” said Rama Krishna, CEO, Country Chicken India. He added that the company would focus on leading metros and tier 2 cities to set up shops.
The first phase for setting up 120 outlets in the southern and western states in the country, starting from Tamil Nadu, would be completed within the end of 2013. It would set up 35 outlets in Tamil Nadu by 2014.
Setting up of the outlets would be partly funded by the franchisee partner, while the rest would be invested by the company itself, he said. The prices would be fixed at par with the current pricing scenario in the organised fast food restaurant chains.
The company would set up central processing plants, where almost 75 per cent processing of the dishes would be done to ensure standardisation of food taste and quality.
In the Phase I, it has plans to set up at least four processing plants, one each in Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border, in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
Out of this, the Maharashtra plant is expected to be the biggest plant for the company in India, said Rama Krishna.
The Phase II and Phase III of expansion would look at establishing presence in central and north India and Phase IV would be expansion to north eastern part of the country.
The Quick Service Restaurants segment, which are popular as fast food restaurants, currently has a size of $1.9 billion (around Rs 8900 crore) in India with around 4,000 outlets from various companies at present, and is growing at 41 per cent annually.
By 2016, the number of branded outlets in the segment is expected to grow towards 21,500 and the company eyes to play a major role in the segment by the time, he added.
It would provide both the original recipe of Country Chicken along with some Indianised recipes thruogh the outlets. There would also be prominence for vegetarian foods, unlike the company's outlets in other countries. It expects almost 20 per cent of the sales revenues to come from the segment.
Country Chicken, established in Australia in 1994, currently has around 450 outlets in various parts of the world, including New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, United Emirates, Russia and Fiji.
