Essar mobile chain eyes Rs 5,000 cr revenues

Essar Group's mobile phone chain The MobileStore is targeting annual revenues of Rs 5,000 crore by 2010, it will increase its turnover five-times from its current turnover of Rs 1,000 crore.

The chain which has 400 stores across the country, currently claims revenues of Rs 150 crore every month on a sales growth of 20 per cent.

After Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecom sold its stake in its Indian operation Hutchison Essar to UK's Vodaphone last year, the Ruias of Essar had announced the retail foray.

"We will set up 2500 stores by 2010 and take our total market share from 3 per cent currently to 10 per cent by that time. We will set up in 500 cities and places where mobile-phones are sold," said Rajiv Agarwal, CEO & director, The MobileStore.

Nearly six million cell phones are sold in the country every month. Mobile sales space, which was dominated by independent stores and unorganised players, has in the recent years seen the emergence of chains such as

Tata's Croma, Videocon's Next, RPG Cellcom, Sangeetha, Univercell among others. These chains have a margin of 5 to 7 per cent from the sale of mobile phones.

Agarwal said that the chain is also planning to scale up the music and gaming category in the coming months. "We will take the share of this category from 5 per cent to 15 per cent going forward," he said. Electronic and accessories have a margin of 20 to 40 per cent.

He said the chain is also focusing on selling more GSM phone connections in the country. "Currently we sell 1 per cent of total mobile phone connections in the country. By 2010, we want to capture 10 per cent of market share," he said.

Agarwal said the chain is also looking at acquiring small chain of mobile phone and accessory retailers if it finds good value prepositions in them.

The company is also planning to open 250 small format stores including shop-in-shops in retail stores, office and commercial complexes, colleges to increase its market presence.

The chain has launched its e-portal site on a pilot basis in Mumbai and would be launching it on a national basis, he said.