More looks to invest Rs 1,000-cr in 5 years to scale up operations

Aditya Birla Group's retail chain 'More' plans to invest around Rs 1,000 crore to scale up its operations in the next five years, a top company official said Friday.

The retail chain, in which US-based e-commerce major Amazon and Samara Capital jointly invested around Rs 4,200 crore last year, also expects its turnover to grow three-fold in five years.

The company operates two retail formats -- supermarkets and hypermarkets, apart from its online channel.

It currently has around 600 supermarkets and 20 hypermarkets.

According to Aditya Birla Retail CEO Mohit Kampani, More has now become a debt-free company, which is helping the retail chain to expand.

"The mandate from our our board is that in the next five years, the company has to grow three times. That's our target," Kampani told PTI.

More has a present turnover of around Rs 4,500 crore, he added.

"You can expect our supermarket count to grow to 1,200 from 600 and hypermarket, you can expect us to grow at five times of today, which would be between around 120 to 125 stores," he added.

"We would invest Rs 1,000 crore to open new stores. It's not only the front end, we would invest in the back-end operations also," he said, adding that most of the funds "would come from internal accruals as the company is profitable and is generating cash."