Actress Rituparna Sengupta unveils the Starmark logo on Wednesday. Picture by Aranya Sen

Being a booklover may not be such a bad thing this New Year, with a home-grown chain playing it by the book in unveiling its retail plans.

The Rs 1,000-crore Emami Group will roll out at least two new bookstores under the Starmark brand by mid-2007 and 10 stores in the next 18 months, at an investment of Rs 50 crore.

Emami, which had entered into a joint venture with the Chennai-based Landmark group in 1999 for the Emami Landmark Store on Lord Sinha Road, has decided to go on its own after Trent, the retail arm of the House of Tatas, acquired the Landmark brand last year.

“We always had our own growth plans and once Trent came into the picture, we decided to go on our own, so that there’s greater flexibility and a regional context in our future formats. Besides, retail has tremendous potential in the East and we didn’t want to sell our 50 per cent stake to the Tatas,” Mohan Goenka, director in the Emami Group, told Metro on Wednesday.

Emami Retail Pvt Ltd, a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Emami Group, will open its second bookstore in City Centre by January-end, followed by a large-format outlet in the South City Mall around June. A third Starmark will come up at the VIP Road mall being developed by the Diamond Group and Kshitij, the venture capital fund of The Future Group.

The City Centre Starmark will be an experiment in the smaller module, the 2,800-sq-ft outlet on the second floor of the Salt Lake mall’s G block focusing primarily on books, with stationery and music taking up some rack space as well.

“The design of the store will be funky and interesting, with space managed in such a manner that we can still house around 70,000 titles,” said Gautam Jatia, CEO of Emami Starmark. The South City store will replicate the product-mix of the Lord Sinha Road flagship store, offering books, music, toys, stationery and gifts.

The 20,000-sq-ft outlet on Prince Anwar Shah Road, being designed by Edifice Consultants, will have a “very distinct look and profile, reflecting the cultural history of Calcutta”, according to Emami officials. The next large-format store is due in the 550,000-sq-ft VIP Road mall near Ultadanga.

“While we will surely take Starmark to neighbouring Guwahati, Jamshedpur and Bhubaneswar, the response to our City Centre format will determine our retail plans in towns like Durgapur and Siliguri,” Jatia pointed out.

The Emami Starmark venture will also focus on speciality retail and leisure products.

“The book business has been growing at a healthy 20 per cent in the city and there’s enough potential, more so in the smaller format,” observes Sidharth Pansari of Crossword.