New Delhi, June 2: Home Stores India Ltd (HSIL), a part of Wadhawan Food Retail Ltd, is planning to expand its supermarket format Sabka Bazaar and lifestyle format The Home Stores by investing Rs 250 crore over the next three years.

The lifestyle store in Calcutta will be ready by early next year.

Salil Sahu, chief executive officer, HSIL said, “We are planning to pump in around Rs 200 crore in the Sabka Bazaar chain over the next three years.”

Sabka Bazaar will have 85 stores by 2009 from 53 stores at present.

By 2010 it will go up to 375 stores. Rs 50 crore will be invested in Home stores during this period.

HSIL has two chains- Sabka Bazaar and The Home Stores. Sabka Bazaar has been on an expansion mode in the north following its acquisition from Shahid Industries in June last year.

Sabka Bazaar had 32 stores in the national capital region (Delhi and some surrounding areas) and two in Moradabad and Uttar Pradesh when Wadhawan Food Retail bought HSIL for an undisclosed amount last year.

Sabka Bazaar has 3,000 types of products in its stores. “After we took over we have added fresh fruits and vegetables on the shelves of Sabka Bazaar,” Sahu said.

Sabka Bazaar also plans to get into contract farming in Haryana.

“In a month’s time we will start contract farming in Haryana for leafy vegetables such as spinach, cabbage and cauliflower,” Sahu said.

As part of its expansion plan, it is going to open stores in Punjab in 2008 and Rajasthan in 2009.

Calcutta launch

The other division of HSIL, The Home Stores is coming to Calcutta in early 2009.

The Home Stores is a lifestyle outlet and has six stores at present.

They are mainly located in the national capital region.

HSIL will invest Rs 50 crore in The Home Store and take the number of outlets to 50 by 2010.

“This format is aimed specially for the metro cities and by next year it will go up to 20 stores,” Sahu said.

The key categories for The Home Store are lights, furniture, gifts, linen, dining and cutlery.

“We will be sourcing our products from all over the world and will have 5,000 items in The Home Stores,” Sahu added. Wadhawan Food Retail runs other chains such as S*Mart in Bangalore, Spinach and Sangam Direct in Maharashtra.

It also has a management contract with the Maratha chain of co-operative stores in Maharashtra.