Dominos to up retail presence

Domino's Pizza India Ltd has announced a Rs 220 -230 crore investment in India over the next three years for expanding its retail fast food chain and manufacturing capacities.

With the expansion the fast food retail chain's chief executive officer Ajay Kaul is confident of capturing close to 50 per cent market share, he said.

Pizza delivery and dine-in is a Rs 470 crore business growing at 35 per cent per annum, of this pizza delivery segment constitutes 40 per cent of the overall market.

"Dominos has a 40 per cent market share and is growing above the market rate at 55 per cent per annum. We expect to capture 48-50 per cent of the market share by 2010," Kaul said.

Kaul was in Pune to launch the seventh Domino outlet in the city, which he described as the fastest growing pizza consumption market in India. "We have opened five stores in one year in Pune and plan to have a total of 15 stores by September 2008 in Pune," he said.

The company will be adding 50-60 stores at an investment of Rs 80-90 lakh per store year-on-year nationally for the next three years.

"We presently have 148 stores in the country and will double our retail outlets in the next three year," Kaul said. Further, the pizza chain also plans to focus more on dine-in customers.

"Presently dine-in contributes to 35 per cent of our overall revenues and we would like to increase this to 40 per cent by 2009," he said.

For supporting its retail expansion, Dominos is also increasing it manufacturing capacities. "We will invest Rs 30-32 crore in setting up three manufacturing units over the next 18 months with capacities to serve 525-550 stores," Kaul said. On an average one store sells 1,500-2,000 pizza's a day.

It will be commissioning a manufacturing unit in Delhi by February 2008 with a capacity to serve 200 restaurants, followed by a unit in Bangalore by September 2008 and Mumbai by February 2009 with a capacity to serve 125 "" 150 and 200 stores each respectively.