Piramyd Retail to be split into two

Piramyd Retail, the Piramal Group promoted retail venture, is likely to recast its management structure soon.

The management restructuring , expected be completed by the March end, would involve separating the lifestyle retailing, food, home and personal care retail into two independent business units.

Nandan Piramal, vice chairman, Piramyd Retail, told Business Standard that the company was in the process of separating the lifestyle retailing and food, home and personal care retail into two independent business units - Piramyd Megastore and TruMart - with its own business heads.

"With the current scale of operations that we are anticipating over the next 18 months, it would require two separate business heads to manage it," said Piramal.

Bipin Gurnani, at present chief operating officer of Piramyd Retail, will soon take over as head of the lifestyle business, while the board is in the process of selecting a head for TruMart.

At the time of the IPO in November last year, the company had said that it was planning 13 Megastores and 61 TruMarts by 2008.

"Our growth plans have become more aggressive since then and each business needs its own growth drivers which is why we are looking at different heads for each," he said.

The company plans to open 35 TruMarts in the next 15 months and about four-five Megastores every year. Of the 35 TruMarts, about 12-15 would be the large format stores of 7,000-8,000 square feet while the rest would be the TruMart Daily's of 1,500-2,000 square feet each. Piramal added that the new Megastores coming up were all in the range of 60,000- 70,000 square feet.

Piramal said that for TruMart, the plan would be to continue to focus on Mumbai and Pune along with one more city, ideally within Maharashtra, which they were in the process of identifying.

For the Megastores, the company is focussing on the tier two cities in the north and the west like Jaipur, Ludhiana and Lucknow and is in the process of finalising its first store in Bangalore.

It has just signed up to set up two stores in Kolkata. Piramyd has already quadrupled its total retail space this year to about 4,40,000 square feet and is looking at doubling it to 8,00,000 square feet in next one year.

The new management structure comes on the heels of the resignation of Krish Iyer, the chief executive officer last month.

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