Home Retail to invest Rs 500 crore

Home Solutions Retail (HSRL), part of the Future Group, will invest Rs 500 crore in its consumer durables and electronics (CDE) retailing venture in the next two years.

As part of this expansion, it is planning to take the number of its eZone stores, the premium CDE format, to 100 stores in the next two years from 26 stores now and the number of stores in the Electronic Bazaar, in the value segment, to 200 stores from 65 stores now.

From both the formats, the retailer is expecting revenues of Rs 800 crore by the end of 2007-08 and Rs 3,000 crore by the end of 2009-10, said Hemchandra Javeri, chief executive officer, HSRL.

"By expanding both the value and premium formats, we want to explore the total opportunity. We want to dominate big cities and tier-II towns and stay ahead of competition," said Javeri.

Consumer durable and electronics market is expected to be around Rs 25,000 crore in the country. The scene was dominated by region specific retailers such as Vivek's in South and Vijay Sales in Mumbai, but the large untapped opportunity saw corporates entering the fray such as Tata's Croma, Videocon's Next, Reliance Digital and others.

"We are looking at 30-50 per cent same store growth. Profitability, expansion, closely working with brands and private labels are our drivers for growth," said Javeri.

The share of its private labels "" Koryo and Sensei "" will grow to 20-22 per cent of the total sales in the next couple of years from 12 to 15 per cent now, he said.

The retailer has 52 service centres across 45 locations.

Javeri claimed that their stores posted total sales of Rs 100 crore during Diwali this year and expecting higher sales during the Christmas-New Year period.

The company has plans to increase its retail space from 0.5 million sq feet to 2 million sq feet in the next couple of years, said Manoj Kumar, CEO, E Zone & Electronic Bazaar.