IKEA, the Swedish home furnishing retailer, celebrated the ground-breaking ceremony of its first store in Navi Mumbai. This is a step towards giving the many people in Mumbai access to IKEA’s well-designed range of home furnishing solutions.
The IKEA store, planned to open early 2019, is located near the Turbhe train station, spread across 430,000 sq.ft. area. The store will have 1,500 parking spaces and a 1,000 seat restaurant serving Swedish and Indian delicacies. To help people shop at ease, there will a supervised children’s play area for visitors called ‘Smaland’. More than 9,500 products will be displayed in an inspirational way, including more than 60 room settings and 3 full size homes giving Mumbaikars access to beautiful, affordable and good quality home furnishing product solutions. The Navi Mumbai store is expected to be visited by more than 4 million Mumbaikars every year.
Each IKEA store is likely to employ around 700 direct co-workers and another 1,500 providing services such as assembly, delivery etc. IKEA has a very strong diversity and inclusion agenda and the Navi Mumbai store will also employ 50 per cent women co-worker. For the coworker’s children there will be a crèche, idea is just to support more women to be a part of retail industry.
The IKEA Foundation, IKEA’s philanthropic arm, in cooperation with UNDP, is also running a skill building project – DISHA with the commitment to train 1 million women from India in coming 10 years. The IKEA store in Mumbai will participate as a partner and will employ women from this program. In parallel to the store openings IKEA is on its way to double the sourcing from India by 2020 to 600 million euros for its India and global stores.
Talking on the sidelines of the ground-breaking event, Chief Executive Officer, IKEA India, Juvencio Maeztu said, “I truly believe that Mumbai is the city of dreams! We feel very welcome and are truly committed to providing a better everyday life for the many people of Mumbai. We will make a positive footprint by creating employment, investing in skill/ competence development, growing local sourcing to meet India and global demands and bringing IKEA’s global best practices to contribute to India’s retail and manufacturing sector growth.”
Honourable Chief Minister of Maharashtra State, Devendra Fadnavis, said, “I am excited to see many global brands taking interest in Mumbai. IKEA’s entry makes me particularly happy as we in the state strongly believe that IKEA will have a very positive impact. This store is a result of the MoU signed earlier by IKEA with Government of Maharashtra as a major step towards establishing retail stores in the State. We will extend full cooperation to enable ease of doing business every day in our state”.
IKEA plans to open 25 stores in India by 2025, and will be opening its first India store in Hyderabad in early 2018. The Mumbai store is planned to be open in early 2019. IKEA is committed to being people and planet positive and sustainability will be an integral part of business operations whether in the store or the supply chain. IKEA stores will have solar panels, LED lights, water treatment plants and modern waste management systems. IKEA suppliers in India work with good social and environmental practices, as part of their compliance code, making the lives of their co-workers better.
Each IKEA store is likely to employ around 700 direct co-workers and another 1,500 providing services such as assembly, delivery etc
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