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| Mall call: Junction in Durgapur’s City Centre gets ready to ride the food-fun wave. Pictures by Anindya Shankar Ray |
Like every year, Sujoy and Sinjini have planned a romantic day out to celebrate their relationship “anniversary”. This year is extra special, thanks to Sujoy’s new job at a swanky bank and the plum offer that Sinjini has landed during campus placements. The day starts with breakfast at Flurys. The morning shop stops include Lee and Sony Centre. A snacky lunch at KFC later, Sujoy and Sinjini head for the Tata Motors showroom to pick out their first car. The evening is spent at Café Coffee Day and the dream day rounded off at an INOX plex watching Dhobi Ghat.
A sweet love story yes, but what’s so special that makes it to a Sunday paper? Sujoy and Sinjini live not in Calcutta, but 182km away, in Durgapur.
Come March, Sujoy can even take his girl to Mainland China, indulge the bookworm in him at Crossword or amble among the racks at Shoppers Stop… all within 10 minutes of home and office.
Already two malls old, Durgapur is set to welcome a giant shop stop — Junction mall, developed by Bengal Shrachi, at City Centre, the new heart of the industrial town.
The mall commands an impressive 2.5 lakh square feet in floor space and another 1 lakh square feet in basement parking. On offer is the what’s what of big-ticket retail, from Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Reebok, Nike, Adidas, Benetton, Lee, Levis, Bata, Rene…. Toss into the melting pot F&B options like Mainland China, Machaan, Haka, KFC, Subway, plus a 300-seater food court offering a clutch of cuisine, and you have the making of a food-and-fun revolution.
“We want Junction to be a complete destination mall, where the customer’s every need is satisfied. We will even have an Apollo clinic on the premises, along with the Tata Motors outlet and a two-wheeler showroom,” said Sidharth Pansari, one of the developers and the franchise owner of the Crossword bookstore chain. Junction will have its own Crossword, stocking over 40,000 books.
The developers have pumped in around Rs 110 crore and the investment on the part of the retailers is Rs 150 crore-plus.
Why Durgapur?
Calcutta girl Srijeeta Bagchi, who completed her BTech from Dr BC Roy Engineering College in 2004, wouldn’t know Durgapur if she visited it now.
“When I went to Durgapur in 2000, I was crestfallen seeing the small town I would have to call home for four years. There was next-to-nothing in terms of recreation. It’s a pleasant surprise to know that Durgapur will get a Mainland China and its own Crossword,” she said.
In the past five years, Durgapur has acquired a new entertainment landscape and a whole new lifestyle. There are two malls — Suhatta and Dreamplex — and another on the way, a nightclub (at Citi Residenci hotel), various eat-out options and brands like Baskin-Robbins and Habib’s, apart from residential hubs like the Bengal Ambuja complex and neat apartment blocks in the Bidhannagar area.
Rahul Todi, the managing director of Bengal Shrachi, is bullish on Durgapur. For more than one reason. “Durgapur is an industrial town and steel and steel-related industries have revived in the past seven to 10 years. Durgapur has also positioned itself as a regional educational hub. Students may not have huge spending potential but they sure love to eat at food courts or watch movies at plexes,” smiled Todi.
From a mall’s point of view, these factors make Durgapur “prime property”.
The collieries of the Asansol-Raniganj-Durgapur belt is another catchment area that’s rich, that too in liquid cash.
Pansari pointed out that Durgapur was fast becoming a shopping destination for residents of Burdwan town, Asansol, Raniganj and Panagarh. “People come to Durgapur to shop from Bolpur, which is a 45-minute drive away, and even Dhanbad, which is an hour and 45 minutes by road. Most of these people would have gone to Calcutta earlier.”
National Highway 2 or Delhi Road, as it is still called, has changed the way outsiders look at Durgapur. The Volvo and Mercedes Benz luxury buses plying between Calcutta and Durgapur make “a world of difference”, says Neha Sharma, a marketing executive at Bengal Shrachi, who travels frequently between Calcutta and Durgapur to oversee the making of Junction mall.
Old residents say malls are altering the aspirations of the people here and living the good life is no more reserved for the occasional trip to Calcutta. Pansari, on the other hand, says Junction mall was born out of Durgapur’s growing aspirations, bringing us to the classical chicken-and-egg situation. Not that anyone minds, as long as everyone has Kentucky Fried Chicken to munch on!
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| CHICKEN AND EGG: A family at the newly-opened KFC outlet |
KFC was opened a month back and is already doing “more business” than the Rajarhat City Centre outlet. It’s easy to understand why. “The moment I saw the billboard announcing that KFC has opened in my town, I couldn’t wait to try it,” gushed Class XII student of Durgapur Girls’ High School Deblina Kundu, eagerly waiting for her order of Chicken Popcorn, which she knows from “ads on TV”.
For Soma Sinha, it made more sense to set up her business in office automation products (photocopy machines, boardroom equipment etc) in Durgapur than in Calcutta, which has a much more competitive market. “Durgapur is growing fast and I wanted to cash in on the opportunities available here,” said the 40-year-old.
Her mother, 65-year-old Kabita Sinha, is happy that her daughter has been able to stay on in the town she grew up in and can even zip around on her two-wheeler without a worry about safety. “We couldn’t imagine leaving the house alone when we were young,” said the lady who first came to Durgapur in 1962.
Boom by the book
The Durgapur resident’s spending power is rising steadily, with multinational and public sector banks setting up their regional headquarters in and around the City Centre area, tech firms cropping up in Bidhannagar and the private education sector booming here, there and everywhere.
Anik Ray, an electrical engineering student at the Durgapur Institute of Advanced Technology and Management (DIATM), rattles off the names of 10 tech and business schools in the vicinity. Nearly 15,000 students flock the town, their youthful desires and demands altering the socio-economic dynamics of the place. Many come from the Northeast, Bihar, Jharkhand and from all over Bengal. A spurt in colleges also means a spurt in jobs. And more business for Soma Sinha.
DIATM math teacher Rajib Choudhury hails from Burdwan town. Taking up a teaching post in Durgapur makes more sense for him than a move to Calcutta (where he had lived briefly). “Durgapur has good facilities. If Calcutta is 100, I’d give Durgapur 70 or 75,” said Choudhury, in true math teacher style.
Very soon, Durgapur will have its own branch of Delhi Public School. One more reason for young couples to stay back. Manisha International School, which started two years back, has launched day-boarding facilities for kids of working parents.
When Metro visited Junction in January-end, an army of workmen swarmed the mammoth-yet-sleek building, busy with their last-minute nip-and-tuck mission. Donning a workman’s helmet, Pansari showed off the expansive premises, designed by Singapore-based architect Stephen Coates.
“Our emphasis was on a sense of space. There will be a lot of wide, open spaces in the mall, with daylight streaming in from the sides and the rooftop. Even the stores are large, around 3,000-4,000sq ft each,” he said.
The Calcuttan would feel at home in Junction, which is something like South City-meets-City Centre. While curved escalators connect the floors of the mall that rise in concentric ovals, the entrance is a smaller version of City Centre’s Kund area, where live performances are sure to become a huge draw. Junction will house three plexes, one of which can double as an auditorium with a stage.
It’s not all booming in destination Durgapur, though. “Commuting within Durgapur is one of our main problems. Taxis are available just at the railway station. What is the point of having night shows at a multiplex if you can’t return home after the movie?” wondered Esha Dutta, a senior lecturer in computer science.
Two-wheelers remain a rage in Durgapur, and so a two-wheeler showroom occupies pride of place among high-street retail stores on the ground floor of Junction mall.
Pollution is another peeve — not vehicular but industrial, with numerous steel and allied units, like sponge iron and alloys, dotting the area.
But for second-year engineering student Sudip Dey, a job at the revamped DSP (Durgapur Steel Plant) would be a “dream come true”.
Ten years back, this dream was only about reaching Calcutta and beyond.
Population of Durgapur catchment area: 8.57 lakh
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■ Literacy: 75 per cent, against the national average of 59.5 per cent. Can be attributed to the number of educational institutes in the area.
■ Average income: Around 47 per cent of Durgapur households have a monthly income of more than Rs 9,000, as against 40 per cent in Calcutta.
■ Banking: Almost two-third of the residents living in the Durgapur Municipal Corporation area avail themselves of banking services.
■ Mall footfall: Average visitors on a lean day at Dreamplex mall is 3,000-3,500. It is 12,000-15,000 a day on weekends. At City Centre, Salt Lake, weekday footfall is about 20,000 and about 35,000 daily on weekends.
■ Not just window shopping: While Dreamplex enjoys an average conversion factor of 75 per cent to 80 per cent, a standalone retail store like the Raymond shop at Durgapur City Centre sees a footfall of 50 to 80 per day, with a conversion of 50 to 60 per cent.
■ Growing daily: The estimated market growth in Durgapur is comparable with Lucknow, and above Coimbatore and Kanpur.
