Chennai to house India's largest departmental store

Chennai, Mar 2 (UNI)The ninth branch of 'Lifestyle', India's largest departmental store, will open up in the city tomorrow over a sprawling 75,000 sq ft area.

Announcing this at a press conference here today, 'Lifestyle' International Managing Director G Sankar said he was happy about store's ''homecoming'' to the city. The first store was opened here 1999.

Keen to tap the organised retail potential, expected to have a growth rate of 30 per cent over the next five years, he said the ninth store would be Lifestyle's ''largest retail format store'' in the country, the fifth most attractive emerging retail market estimated to be Rs 9,300 billion.

Mr Sankar said 'Lifestyle', looking at rapid expansion, would triple its turnover in terms of value and space in three years time.

The Landmark Group, to which 'Lifestyle' belonged, had invested Rs 130 crore, so far. With the ramp up in Lifestyle's retail facilities, the group would triple its investment to Rs 400 crore in three years time, Group Director H Ramanathan said.

The Landmark Group's Middle East turnover was 1.2 billion USD and was expected to grow in the 30 to 40 per cent range in the Middle East, he said, adding the hypermarket roll-out was also in the offing.

Typically, setting up a 'Lifestyle' store would mean an investment of around three million USD, he said, responding to a query.

Lifestyle's current turnover was between Rs 350 and Rs 400 crore and it proposed to scale up its single standalone store to five stand alone home centres in three years time. From the eight Lifestyle stores available in major metros like Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore, 25 to 30 such stores would come up within the same period.

To a query, Mr Sankar said 'Lifestyle' maintained an inventory worth around Rs nine crore and the per day footfalls in each of its outlet were between 3,000 and 8,000.

For the expansion in metros would continue to be of ''lot of interest,'' but it was also evaluating tier II cities to house its stores, 75 per cent of them selling branded ware.

UNI HV VV 1812