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Plans to have 400 stores by March next

— Bijoy Ghosh

On growth path: A Subhiksha mobile store in Chennai.

Vinay Kamath

Chennai, July 25 Discount retail chain Subhiksha, currently the largest retailer in the country with 780 stores across nine States, has taken its discount format to the mobile phones market and aims to be the largest national retail chain for cell phones.

Started on an experimental basis in Delhi last July, the chain has scaled up to 145 exclusive Subhiksha Mobile stores in the Capital and other States such as Punjab and Gujarat and in Mumbai and Chennai. It has opened 15 such stores in Chennai and intends to take it up to 30 by year end and to around 400 stores across the country by March next.

Mr R. Subramaniam, Managing Director, Subhiksha Retail, speaking to Business Line, claimed that the retail chain sold 65,000 phones in June, the highest sale through a chain.

The other chains which have a network of stores are Hot Spot of the Modis and The Mobile Store of Essar Telecom. In six months, Subhiksha expects to push through a sale of at least two lakh mobiles a month, Mr Subramaniam said. Mobile phones are also sold through around 285 supermarkets in a shop-in-shop model.

The stores stock all the major brands of cell phones, spanning a whole price band and sell for at least 5 per cent cheaper than other stores, he said.

Asked what connect grocery retail and mobile phones have, Mr Subramaniam said that it was an opportunistic move for the retail chain. “There had been no organised retail chain in the business. It’s a low margin business and we noticed synergy with the rest of our business which is mostly in branded goods and consumers have full knowledge of the products,” he explained.

Mobile phones too, he added, is a price-driven product today where consumers update themselves on the product either through the Web or word-of-mouth and then effect a purchase, whereas the branded consumer durables business would be a different kettle of fish as product features are so varied.

“Also, a lot of the overhead costs of the management structure is spread across our business,” he added.

The mobile phones market in India will be Rs 20,000 crore this year and growing fast.

According to Mr D. Shivakumar, Country Manager, Nokia India, 66.7 million mobile phones were sold in the country in 2006, the third largest in the world after the US and China in terms of handsets sold.

Asked whether Nokia sells a big chunk of its phones through the Subhiksha network, Mr Shivakumar said, “Organised trade accounts for 5 per cent of Nokia India sales and Subhiksha is one of the players in organised trade.”

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