IKEA's first India store may open in Hyderabad next month

Leading Swedish home furnishings retailer IKEA is likely to open its first India store here next month.

The store, spread over 13 acres with a built up space of 4,00,000 square feet, will feature over 7,000 IKEA products of which almost 2,000 will be priced below Rs 200.

John Achillea, IKEA Telangana Managing Director, on Thursday announced the installation of IKEA's wordmark.

While the company said the store will be opened shortly, officials in the Industry Department of Telangana said the store will be inaugurated in June.

The store will also have a 1,000-seater restaurant which is IKEA's largest in over 400 stores it has globally.

The store is coming with an investment of Rs 1,000 crore. It will create direct jobs for 800 people -- half of them, the company promises, will be women.

In November last year, IKEA opened its experiential centre, providing a sneak peek into its products and solutions.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, IKEA designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances and home accessories, and is considered to be the largest furniture retailer in the world.

The company officials said last year that they plan to open 25 stores in India by 2025. The next store will come up in Mumbai in 2019. This will be bigger than the Hyderabad store with five lakh square feet.

--IANS

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