Indian Retailer

For retailers, every occasion to celebrate is appropriate to do big business. This year, the Republic Day falls soon after weekend and top retailers are hiking their advertising and marketing spends by an additional 30% to 50% on offering huge discount offers, freebies to woo customers and spur sales. Before the last Republic Day, they were not so enthusiastic due to the economic slowdown, and rather preferred to maintain their consumer offers to certain categories only.

Big Bazaar, part of the Future Group, plans to launch Saalke Sabse Saste Chaar Din (the year’s most economical four days of shopping) offer between January 23 and 26, which will run across 120 Big Bazaar hypermarkets in 70 cities of India on many merchandise. Damodar Mall, group customers director, Future Group told FE, “After witnessing revival in footfalls since October last year , we are hiking expenditure for ads and marketing spends for this Republic Day over previous corresponding period by an additional 25% to 30%, and thereby cash in on the opportunity from weekend onwards as January 23 falls on a Saturday.”

“We hope to achieve 35% to 40% higher revenues through promotions during the Republic Day through innovative consumer offers apart from offering huge discounts on existing merchandise as well,” Mall added. The overall marketing budget by Big Bazaar was Rs 100 crore during the previous Republic Day, which included below-the-line advertisements, promotions and innovations, according to the Future Group spokesperson.

Meanwhile, Hypercity Retail India too plans to hike its marketing budget by over 50% for this Republic Day, over previous corresponding period, in launching innovative consumer offers on certain existing and new merchandise. This would include food, grocery and general merchandise, Ashutosh Chakradeo, head - food & grocery, Hypercity Retail ( India ) Ltd said.

Premium department store, Shopper’s Stop plans to launch new variety of ethnic apparels in private labels, which will be offered to customers at discounts with a value-for-money pricing strategy during the Republic Day. Besides, there could be offers on purchase of certain branded luxury perfumes and accessories as well, its president and CEO, Govind Shrikhande said. According to him, “Soon after New Year promotions, we feel Republic Day is the main driving force for spurring sales. Hence, we are upbeat about upcoming occasional celebrations and looking at increasing marketing spends.”

Kishore Biyani-led Pantaloon Retail India Ltd (PRIL) will hive-off its value segments — Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar — into a separate company called Future Value Retail from January 1.

The BSE-listed company has completed all formalities and gained shareholders approval through a postal ballot to hive-off this segment, the company Managing Director, Mr Kishore Biyani, said on Wednesday.

“The postal ballot and other processes are complete and we are looking at January 1 as the starting date for Future Value Retail,” Mr Biyani told reporters on the sidelines of a conference here.

The value retailing segment of the company consists of supermarket Food Bazaar and hypermarket Big Bazaar, which constitutes up to 55 per cent of PRIL’s total revenues.

“At the company level (PRIL), we are expecting growth to jump by 30-40 per cent,” Mr Biyani said, indicating that the Indian retail industry has finally crawled out of the woods.

The company has plans to open 140 Big Bazaars and Food Bazaars over the next 4-5 years in addition to the 120 stores it already operates across the country.

Mr Biyani said that Pantaloon Retail will spend close to Rs 400 crore in the rest of this fiscal (till June 2010) for expansion. — PTI

Pantaloon Retail is looking at acquiring a food led fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) business. It is in the final stages for Big Bazaar tie-up with international player.

Here is a verbatim transcript of Haresh Soneji’s comments on CNBC-TV18.

The company is into value unlocking thing. So it is going in for a holding company kind of structure where in all the businesses apart from retail business is unlocked and transferred to a holding company. Hence, pure retail will remain under Pantaloon Retail and the shareholders of the company will receive shares in the swap ratio which will be decided. A postal ballot is already on and the decision will be announced on December 16.

Apart from that, the company is close to an international tie up with an European retail major. This will help the company get into a Hyper Mart as well as cash and carry business. Pantaloon is looking at acquiring a food led FMCG business. Its private labels in the FMCG space, which do around Rs 125-130 crore annually and the acquisition in this space will help Pantaloon go in with logistics of that food led FMCG business. This is how they will see growth multiplying in this segment. We might see a deal announced soon on the e-zone front.

In the E-zone segment, which is an electronic bazaar segment of Pantaloon, ICICI Ventures and Bajaj, it holds close to about 33% stake. Tata Croma’s private equity (PE) deal is also likely. Hence, a PE player will come in and ICICI Ventures and Kotak Mahindra will find an exit. The market is clearly excited on the stock.