Future Group is planning to open about 850 to 900 KB’s Fair Price shops. The locations have yet not been finalised, but the retailer shall expand in the same market clusters it has a presence in. In an exclusive interview with IndiaRetailing, Damodar Mall, group customer director at Future Group stated, “We will expand KB’s Fair Price shops in select towns. First, it will be a concentrated approach in the markets we are already present in — Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.”
Denying recent media reports on closure of a number of KB’s Fair Price stores, Mall stated, “The report was incorrect. KB’s Fair Price is a business model where, we will keep churning old localities and getting into new ones. If we have closed one store in a locality, we have opened another in the same catchment.”
“We have mapped 850 to 900 KB’s Fair Price shops. The model is low-cost and revenues from these stores have been the highest among all the modern trade players in the neighbourhood space. The model is viable and a part of our expansion plans,” Mall informed.
Further informing on Future Group’s plans on its format — Big Bazaar — Mall informed that the company is targeting a total number of 350 Big Bazaar stores, although the timeline is not yet decided. At present there are around 120 Big Bazaar stores in India, present across 67 cities of the country.
— Bhavya Misra
