And now, the speciality mall

Malls are passe. The next step in big-format, high-end organised retailing in India is the speciality mall. Three speciality malls opened in the country last year — Eva, the women's mall in Bangalore, Ishania in Pune to cater to construction needs, and Gold Souk, the jewellery mall in Gurgaon.

A few more are in the works — two in Gurgaon, one for weddings, and the other for automobiles (though this seems to have been indefinitely delayed). Gurgaon also had Arcus, the first home-products mall which opened in 2000, moved location, and has since shut shop owing to poor footfalls and transactions.

In spite of this mixed response, Kolkata seems to have taken a shine to speciality malls, and four are currently under construction, scheduled to open over the next two years.

These are Fort Knox, the 80,000 sq ft jewellery mall; the 1,00,000 sq ft Homeland and 2,15,000 sq ft Block-by-Block, two malls on house and home products located in Bhawanipore and New Town respectively; and Galleria on Park Street, exclusively for women's products.

Those in the know say there are at least two others in the offing — an electronics mall in the heart of town, and a food mall in Gariahat. Plus, a specialised mall devoted to books which will come up on College Street.

Coincidentally, all these malls are being built by local developers, and for most of them this is their first foray into commercial/retail spaces. Clearly, with average rentals going as high as Rs 120-150/sq ft, they feel it is more lucrative than building apartments. Then there is the enchanced cash-flow from securitisation, which is what Rahul Todi of Block-by-Block plans to do.

Other than all the spiel about the Kolkatan's growing spending power, the reason for so many speciality malls, says Tirthankar Banerjee of real estate-consultants Chesterton Meghraj, is that developers have land-holdings in prime business areas which are not big enough for large-scale malls. Indeed, most of these offer only around 1,00,000 sq ft, split into ground plus six or seven floors.

What remains to be seen is how far they'll succeed in Kolkata. The prognosis does not look too good so far. Fort Knox is at least a year behind schedule. Ashok Bengani, president, Fort Group, says that it will finally open this January, with 20 of the total 37 stores.

Also, Bengani is still "talking" to a few of the area's traditional <i>kaarigars,</i> whose workmanship this mall was meant to showcase. As of now, there are big brands — Tanishq, Kiah, Orra, Adora, Signus, and local players Sawansukha and Zenith, to name a few.

While the mall's location on Camac Street might work in its favour, on the flip side, there are already a number of jewellery stores in the vicinity — even the Tanishq company store is just down the road.

The two home malls have fixed on anchor stores as the main drivers of their popularity and sales. Homeland will have Furnitureworld and Block-by-Block will have Spaces and Roof-to-Tiles.

Home products, says Todi, quoting an ICRA study, constitute 60 per cent of consumer-spending in India, and he pegs the success of his mall to the fact that Pantaloons and Shopper's Stop are allocating extra space to the category.

But while a few extra thousand sq ft devoted to the home may drive up the sales of a general departmental store, would a store devoted entirely to home products bring in footfalls?

For this reason, both Todi and Sushil Mohta, whose Merlin Projects is building Homeland, have set aside a space for product launches, exhibitions, workshops and also a resource cafe for consumers. Clearly, sales is to be driven by activity at the mall.

Also, it helps that the two are looking at making the mall a B2B platform as well as a a B2C one. As for Galleria, it's not talking anchor-stores at all.

Anirudh Daga, managing director of the Avani Group which is developing the project, is planning to attract women to the 1,20,000 sq ft mall with premium brands that haven't come to the city yet — Guess, Marks & Spencer, Just in Vogue, Nike, Provogue Studio, Jashna, Anita Dongre et al. Then, of course, it has location working in its favour.

All these strategies look fine on the drawing board, but by this time next year we'll know whether they work in reality.