Birla Retail launches more.Megastore

Aditya Birla Retail (ABRL), the retail arm of the Aditya Birla Group, will be investing between Rs 250-300 crore for setting up at least a dozen hypermarkets under the brand name more.Megastore.

Launching the company's first hypermarket more.Megastore in Vadodara today, Russell Berman, chief executive officer (hypermarket division), ABRL, said: "We will probably open a dozen hypermarkets in 2008-09 with an investment of Rs 250- 300 crore.  Based on the European style, the hypermarket offer a seamless shopping experience of 60,000 products by over 500 suppliers."

Spread across 1,50,000 sq.ft., the hypermarket in Vadodara has been set up with an investment of Rs 25 crore, and will be followed by more hypermarkets in Ahmedabad and National Capital Region (NCR), said Berman.

Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman, Aditya Birla Group, said: "We have enough funding for our retail plans through internal accruals and won't be raising money from the capital market.  As for the investment, it depends on the scale of rollout in retail in the country.  It will be substantiative enough for a national presence."

The company has 430 supermarkets, which is expected to reach 500 stores by the end of the financial year 2007-08.

Sumant Sinha, chief executive officer, ABRL, said that apart from these two formats, the company is also looking forward to experiment with special format stores.  "We will observe the performance of these two formats and later experiment with special format stores. We might also be looking for some joint ventures in future if needed," said Sinha.