Future Group plans 75 Foto Depots

"Our idea is to open around 75 such stores, each having a carpet area of 500 sft, across the country by next year (July-June financial year)," Preeti Vyas, business head, Depot, told Business Standard, adding the company would soon enter into a tie up with HP and would probably lease the printing equipment from the latter.

At Foto Depot, customers can get themselves clicked and get their pictures printed on a variety of fun surfaces and products like T-shirts, wallpapers, mugs, collages etc in just 10 minutes.

They can walk into Foto Depot with any source of image such as camera phone, digital camera, memory card, USB pen drives, negatives and CDs, download the images on the touchscreen kiosks placed at the stores and walk away with an output of the image on the medium of their choice.

The company hopes to garner revenues of Rs 1,000 per sft a month through this new format.

She said the company was expecting to double revenues from Depot in a year, from the present Rs 50 crore, on the back of its increasing footprint across Future Group's Big Bazaars and standalone stores. "Depot is now present in 106 Big Bazaars and 11 standalone stores across the country. Our plan is to open four more standalone stores by this fiscal end, besides introducing the concept at around 35 more Big Bazaars, which are expected to be launched in the next 12 months," Vyas said.

Depot Self Publishing initiative, which enables and empowers writers to publish and sell their own book with a minimum of 25 copies, has already released four books under this division, and has on hand 25 projects at various stages, she said, adding, "We feel that some of these books have the potential to do well and we are going to discover some real gems in our journey this year and publish and sell them on our own by paying royalty to the authors."

Vyas said they had been receiving enquiries from aspiring musicians on whether they could cut their albums through Depot Self Publishing. "Music albums, unlike book publishing, involves huge investments in recording studios, sound equipment and CD copiers.

We are considering this option as well and are working on funding and the price point. We hope to launch these services in a year or two," she said.