The Hindu Business Line : FoodWorld to confine focus to South in phase I

FOODWORLD, the RPG flagship food and grocery chain, is, for now, restricting its focus on expanding its 92 outlet-strong chain to 125 only in the South in its first phase of expansion.

This, according to Mr Raghu Pillai, President & CEO, Retail Sector, RPG Enterprises, is because there is enough potential in the southern market, to preclude the need to expand in the North. However, for Spencers/Giant hypermarket, the focus would be on expanding "north, west and eastwards".

The existing two hypermarkets will see a change in name to `Spencers' next month, because claimants, national and international, to the `Giant' name had surfaced. On the other hand, Spencers, he said, was a recognizable brand name and the company had absolute rights over it.

In the next 15 months, the company is raising the number of its hypermarkets to 10 from the current 3.

According to Mr Pillai the plan was to "saturate" the Andhra Pradesh market, with 4-5 stores in the State.

Interestingly, according to ShopperTrends 2003, an annual pan-Asia shopping habits and attitudes study by ACNielsen,

"While Chennai (70:30) overwhelmingly prefers modern format stores, the otherwise trendy Delhi (94:6) overwhelmingly prefers traditional format retail. ... What is interesting is that modern format retailing was pioneered and accepted with open arms by the so-called tradition-bound southern markets."

Also, despite Indian retailers putting their faith in multiple-storied malls, Mr Pillai said, its hypermarkets would stick to the single level shopfloor aimed at suiting shoppers' convenience.