Customers take a look at the products displayed on the shelves of Reliance Mart. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, Aug. 27: More options await Ranchi residents who now have a hypermarket in their city to redefine one-stop-shopping. On Tuesday, Reliance Mart opened its 40,000sqft outlet on Kanke Road.

The city had so far only one supermarket — the Big Bazar — on the Main Road. Ever since its opening, the store had been register- ing significant foot counts, though many of the visitors landed in just for window shopping.

While the customers here were still learning to evaluate options, they got even bigger outlet, a hypermarket, which has all the products of a supermarket and a department store.

The newly opened Reliance Mart boasts of having more than 30,000 products on its shelves. Besides, it can accommodate 80 cars and 150 two-wheelers in its parking at any given point of time.

Under one roof, a customer can avail fresh food and grocery, home care products, apparel and accessories, footwear, fast moving consumables, consumer durables, electronic gadgets, and lifestyle product.

The hypermarket has two floors connected with an escalator.

Shopping experience at Reliance Mart goes beyond the purchase-payment exercise as there is also a maintenance help-desk to offer after-sales services on electronic products. The help-desk is called “Reliance ResQ”.

The store had over 250 workers and it would remain open from 10am to 10pm, said manager of the mart Tuhin Das.

There are 12 billing counters equipped with computers to avoid congestion at the check-out point of the shop.

Several visitors present in the inaugural function found themselves lost amid options. “One needs several hours to scan the products present here,” said Meenakshi Sharma, a housewife. She was, however, delighted to see the pickles and bakery products, ordered by her, being prepared right in front of her eyes.

Availability of a wheat grinding machine, a tailor shop in the apparel section and eatables like batter, pickles and fresh fruits caught the attention of Manju Saxena, a resident of Kanke road. “Many of the fruit varieties shelved here have been imported from Australia,” shop manager Tuhin Das said.

Bakery products, oatmeal raisins, and chocolates were also in demand during the inaugural function.

Children were found purchasing T-shirts that had cartoon characters printed on them.

The apparel section of the shop was found to be most crowded. Both branded and generic products were available in this section. “In our survey, we found that the fashion sense of the youths of Ranchi was in sink with the latest trends in metro markets. We have tried to target the young professionals in this section of the store,” Tuhin said.

“The shop also offers membership cards to reward loyal customers,” Tuhin said. A cardholder could avail significant discounts on the basis of volume of purchase made at the store, he added. “Besides, we would soon offer credit facilities of the Reliance Finance to high volume consumers,” he said.

The mart was not just a middle-class caterer, said Das adding: “We have several upmarket products for the customers belonging to higher social and economic segments.

Das added that construction work of the store took almost three-and-half months. “Being aware of the parking problems facing the city, we took extra care to include sufficient parking area in our layout,” he said.