Future Group to focus on new retail segments

Pantaloon Retail is looking at increasing its presence in the entertainment and leisure, sports and food retail space, managing director Kishore Biyani said.

The Future Group company has significant presence in fashion merchandising retail space through its outlets Pantaloons, Central, Big Bazaar, Celio and Ethnicity.

“Fashion for us today is a billion dollar business. We want to expand the food business now. Till now, we had 35% of space dedicated to food segment, but we are now opening the shackles. Plan also is to create demand in the entertainment and leisure segment, similarly, electronics for us is an interesting challenge,” Biyani said.

In November, Pantaloon plans to launch a new packaged commodity product brand (private label) ‘Ekta’ with 35 stock-keeping units (SKUs) to start with that will have products like poha, sabudana, besan and others.

‘’We are going to launch community-specific products to cater to food preferences of each community in India,’’ Biyani said. The company is also launching a private label in lingerie soon.

In the entertainment and leisure space, the company is present through its subsidiary Galaxy Entertainment, and is likely to expand this business.  Pantaloon Retail is recording 20%-plus growth in same store sales from the Onam season, Biyani said.

Amongst new business ideas, Future Group plans to launch is a travel company.
It recently acquired travel company Club 7, but Biyani declined to comment on the group’s strategy for this segment.

Another business the group is looking at is launching stores for printing and designing needs.

It also expects its sports retail subsidiary Planet Sports to reach Rs 1,000 crore in turnover in a few years.

Biyani said the home segment has started to show positive growth after reporting de-growth throughout the last financial year.