Subhiksha's plans to set up consumer durables stores may be delayed by six months due to a slowdown in the retail and the real estate sectors, a senior company official said. "White goods and consumer durables vertical was what we were looking at. Earlier, the plan was to start somewhere around January-February, but now we have postponed it to a slightly later date," the official said.
"This is mainly because of the economic problems. Slowdown is affecting us also. We are looking at re-scheduling our plans to May-June next year," he said.
Earlier, the country's largest super market, pharmacy and telecom retail chain had said that it intends to set up 150 consumer durables retail outlets at an investment of Rs 600 crore by June 2009.
However, the official declined to detail the number of stores and quantum of investment planned under the revised schedule.
"Consumer durables will require quite a lot of investment," he said without detailing further. Subhiksha plans to invest Rs 1,000 crore for expansion of its retail network including super markets over the next 12-18 months.
"Major thrust is West Bengal, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh," the official said. The company currently has 1,580 retail stores. Subhiksha plans to fund its expansion plans partly through internal accruals and rest through debt and equity raised from domestic and overseas market, the official said.
He said an announcement on capital raising plans was likely "any time" but did not elaborate further. The company's plan to list on Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange has also been pushed back to "early 2009" instead of end of this calendar year, he said.
Media reports said Subhiksha, which acquired Blue Green Construction & Investments, was planning to get listed on the domestic bourses through a reverse merger by December-end.
