"We aim to be the No.1 consumer durables retailer in the country in the next 6-9 months," said Raghu Pillai, managing director and chief executive officer, Home Solutions Retail (India) Ltd, a subsidiary of Pantaloon.
To that end, Home Solutions will investing Rs 35 crore (Rs 350 million) for setting up a string of consumer durable stores, said Pillai.
In keeping with Pantaloon's practice of catering to both the value and lifestyle categories, Home Solutions will set up stores in both categories.
The lifestyle outlets will be standalone stores called E-zones, spanning 15,000-30,000 square feet. E-zones will be setup in Hyderabad, Indore, Bangalore, Pune, New Delhi and three located in Pantaloon's central malls in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune.
All these, except one Central mall E-zone, are expected to come up by March 2006. Electronic Bazaars, the value shop-in-shops, will come up in Pantaloon's Big Bazaar outlets.
Twenty-two such shop-in-shops are expected to come up by the end of 2005, the first one being at Visakhapatnam. The company hopes to launch 30 outlets by June 2006, said Pillai, adding, it is planning to set up 65 electronic bazaars and 40 E-zones by 2008.
There will be also be a consumer durables division in 'Home Town', the large format stores of Home Solutions Retail India, apart from the divisions for furniture, furnishings and home improvement.
The first one will come up by September 2006 in Noida. Three other locations in Gurgaon, Bangalore and Thane (in Mumbai) have been zeroed in on for 'Home Towns'.
The company expects to earn Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) a year from its consumer durables business. Pillai said what will make it different from other existing consumer durable retailers is the ambience, which will make it a quality shopping experience.
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