News: Hypercity eyes Kolkata foray

(BS 29/05/2006) Kolkata - Andrew Levermore, chief executive officer, Hypercity Retail (India) Pvt Ltd (HRIPL), said, "We will be in the city by the end of 2007."

At present, there is just one Hypercity which opened on May 1 this year in Malad, a suburb of Mumbai.

Levermore, speaking on the sidelines of "The shop", an Images Retail seminar on retailing in eastern India, said the second Hypercity will open in Gurgaon before the end of the year.

The company is also targeting tier-II cities and has fixed on locations, from 120,000 sqft to 165,000 sqft, in Lucknow, Aurangabad, Coimbatore and Ludhiana.

HRIPL plans to have 14 Hypercities all over the country in the next 10 years with eight in Mumbai itself and perhaps four or five in Kolkata.

Each store will require an investment of around Rs 15 crore, which will be raised through equity financing or bank loans.

For its Kolkata store, HRPIL is looking for a developer which will provide the company with a 100,000 square feet area on a single floor, where Hypercity could anchor a mall or be the only store.

Alternatively, the company would like to have four acres on the edge of town where it will develop the store itself.

Hypercity has been well received in Mumbai, said Levermore, with footfalls even on the quietest day hovering around 7,500, and far above the 3,500 that had been anticipated.

Conversions and billing rates too have been a high, he said.

Besides apparel, home-decor, home entertainment, fresh food items like fruits, vegetables and meat made up a large part of the stock at Hypercity, accounting for as much as 30 per cent of the display and 18 per cent of the sales.

With restrictions on sourcing directly from the farmer or venturing into contract farming, HRPIL sourced its perishable food items directly from the local markets now.

Hypercity also had a tie-up with Waitrose, a food supermarket chain in the United Kingdom.