Future Group plans 1500 fair price shops

Making its entry into the last-mile retail space, Kishore Biyani-promoted Future Group today said it would set up 1,500 new format fair price shops over the next two years.

The neighbourhood stores, to be branded as KB's Fair Price shops, plans to sell leading brands of around 300 essentials, almost 10 per cent cheaper than the market price and the local brands up to 20 per cent less.

"Our target is to provide essential items cheaper than the market price and we are looking at a 20 per cent market share of the neighbourhood retail market," Pantaloons Foods MD Narendra Baheti said.

About 1,500 new format stores were coming up in two years in top-eight markets of the country, aiming at about 20 per cent share of the retail market in the catchment areas, where these shops would be opened, he said. The company's initiative is to give competitors such as Subhiksha a run for their money. Positioned as no-frills fair price shops with a tag line sare jahan se sasta, Baheti said they would alter a few rules of the retail scene in India.

Baheti said initially the stores would be owned by the company and in future other business models would also be identified based on the market research and success of the project. Though he declined to give a cumulative figure, he said the cost of setting up a 2,000-sq ft store was around Rs 280 a sq ft as against Rs 2,000 a sq ft for a modern super market store.

The company is planning cluster stores in Mumbai and Delhi as a part of a pilot project, followed by Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai.