DNA SPECIAL
HYDERABAD: They say marriages are made in heaven. However, now they are being made in malls.
Right from the matchmaker and the wedding planner to the mehendi wali and the halwai, not to leave out the trousseau and the honeymoon tour operator, all is now available in a few specialty marriage malls in Hyderabad and Kolkata. Many more are coming up in other major cities of the country.
“We organise a wedding in seven days. But if required, we can do it in two days,” says V Rajendra Kumar, chairman and managing director of the Kalanikethan Wedding Mall.
The 35,000-sqft mall in the heart of Hyderabad’s business district, Panjagutta, is a precursor to the numerous malls slated to dot the retail landscape over the next few years.
In Kolkata, a marriage mall, Shagun, was launched last January, which targeted the upper-middle class. “But since this is a one-stop shop, many middle class customers prefer to get their merchandise from here,” says Jaideep Khaitan, director, Elize International, which owns Shagun.
Real estate experts say at least a dozen wedding malls are in the making, three of them in Hyderabad. North India’s real estate major Omaxe Group will set up seven malls across the country with an average investment of Rs100 crore each.
The first of these, a 1.75-lakh-sqft mall, is being built at Gurgaon in Haryana. Another, a 1.5-lakh-sqft mall, is coming up at Agra. On the cards are Ludhiana, Patiala, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.
Estimated to be Rs 50,000 to 100,000 crore annually, the Indian marriage market is a field yet to be exploited by organised retail.
Even after the malls are ready, organised retail will only be taking a minuscule helping of the pie. That is one reason why the mall wallas are brimming with optimism. Shagun has notched up sales worth Rs 16 crore and Khaitan is looking at an annual turnover of Rs 25 crore.
“Although the marriage market is seasonal,” says Rohtas Goel, CMD Omaxe, “wedding purchases go on throughout the year. Therefore business will be healthy.”
The real action is expected to be in the south. Kumar says an average middle class family in south India spends up to Rs 10 lakh on a wedding compared to the north Indian average of Rs 3 lakh.
According to industry observers, wedding expenditure by families in the south has been going up by 10 to 15 per cent every year, irrespective of community and class. A major factor behind this growth is the IT-BPO boom in these parts of the country.
Kumar is already planning his next venture - a 1,00,000-sqft wedding mall near the upcoming Hyderabad International Airport. He plans to set up more malls, one each in Bangalore and Chennai, in two years. He is also planning an online marriage bureau and shop to cater to NRIs.
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