Banerjee: Upbeat

Calcutta, May 16: After three years of hibernation, RPG Retail is up and roaring again.

The company, which has shifted base to Calcutta from Chennai, is trebling retail space from 0.5 million square feet to 1.5 million square feet during this fiscal.

The company is trying to establish a pan-India presence, shedding the image of an entity restricted only to the south.

The company, headed by Sumantra Banerjee who also doubles up as the managing director of CESC, is aggressively expanding in the north, especially in the National Capital Region (NCR).

The strategy will be repeated in Bengal later this fiscal.

RPG’s expansion is coming at a time when the industry is witnessing the entry of big-ticket investors like Reliance and Bharti

“We will open eight stores of different formats in the state between November to March. In all, some 200,000 square feet of retail space will be created here,” Banerjee, president and chief executive of RPG Retail, told The Telegraph.

Seven of the eight stores will come up in Calcutta. The other store will be in Durgapur.

RPG Retail, which has embraced Music World into its fold, has four different formats ? Spencer’s Fresh, Spencer’s Daily, Spencer’s Super and Spencer’s Hyper.

The Hyper ? spread over 30,000-40,000 square feet ? will sell everything from grocery to apparel to houseware.

There will be three such stores in Calcutta ? at Mani Mall on the Bypass, at the South City and on Rashbehari Avenue where the book store, Books & Beyond, will also come up.

The first of the eight stores will come up in Durgapur and will be in the hyper store format.

In addition, four Spencer Daily stores selling groceries, fresh food, chilled and frozen products and bakery will also come up in the city. Two of the stores will be in Salt Lake.

The company has taken space on Taratolla Road for managing the back-end distribution.

“We will exit the year with Rs 1,000 crore turnover compared with Rs 400 crore in 2005-06. The target is to take it up to Rs 2,000 crore in 2007-8,” Banerjee added.

The company is now making profit at the shop level. Once the ramp up takes place, the overall profitability will kick in from a bigger scale of operation.

“At any point of time, some half a million retail space is under negotiation with builders,” he said.

Banerjee has managed to lure good talent across the globe ? there is an expert building private label brands.

Since apparel gives best margins, the expansion in this segment will add to the bottomline.