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Purvita Chatterjee

WITH organised retail growing by leaps and bounds, mall management systems have come into place whereby retailers with deep pockets are finding synergies in owing real estate and using it to retail their brands. This has led to the growing trend of mall developers turning retailers and vice versa.

For instance, the K. Raheja group, which owns Shoppers' Stop, saw the advantage of getting into the business of mall management through a vertical integration exercise, launching one of Asia's biggest mall in the suburbs of Malad. Inorbit Mall, apart from housing Shoppers' Stop, has leased its property to other retail chains such as Globus and Giant.

According to Anand Sundaram, General Manager, Inorbit Malls, "There was a gap in the retailing atmosphere and building malls is part of the vertical integration by the group." K. Raheja was already present in the construction business and it was a matter of simply integrating its existing businesses to making its position advantageous in the retail scenario.

Adds Sundaram, "It was a great advantage for us since we had the knowhow of both the real estate and retail business. If organised retailing has to grow, it has to go hand in hand with mall management as well."

Recently, Pantaloon also decided to vertically integrate its business and leased out Bangalore Central to launch the first seamless mall in the country. India's first seamless mall, it claims it will redefine and revolutionise the shopping experience in India. Bangalore Central, owned by Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd, has opened to the public in Bangalore city's nerve centre, MG Road.

Bangalore Central houses over 300 brands across categories, such as apparel, footwear and accessories for women, men and children, apart from a whole range of music, books, coffee shop, food court, supermarket (Food Bazaar), fine dining restaurant, pub and discotheque. The mall also has a separate section for services such as travel, finance, investment, insurance, concert/cinema ticket booking, bill payments and other miscellaneous services. Bangalore Central also houses Central Square, a dedicated space for product launches, impromptu events, daring displays, exciting shows and art exhibitions.

Bangalore Central, conceptualised with a theme and tagline that says "Shop, eat and celebrate" has new features such as centralised billing and Radio Central, India's first in-house radio station, only some of the many things that the retail giant Pantaloons has in the offing for Bangalore Central's customers.

The seamless mall, which offers direct walk-ins to brands, is designed to help the brands in unleashing their complete potential. The consumer gets to experience the brand in a setting that is uniform and bereft of boundaries. The brands housed in the Mall have the facility to organise in-store brand promotions or launches or schemes and in turn strengthen their image and branding. The stores are also laid out so that customers can locate and access a category in which all the brands concerned are put together. This means that once a customer walks into the category, all the brands get the customer's attention.

Commenting on this format, Kishore Biyani, Managing Director, Pantaloon Retail, said, "Bangalore Central is based on the concept of a seamless mall with the objective to provide a world-class retail experience to customers and brands. We are extending the experience beyond just shopping to "Shop, eat and celebrate", the spirit that symbolises affluent India. Pantaloon has always been the pioneer in the retail market and with Central, we are hoping to create new benchmarks in mall management."

Muralidharan, Head, Pantaloon Malls, said, "With malls mushrooming, our competitive edge comes from the amount of experience and expertise that Pantaloons has in retail management, and a keen understanding of consumer needs.

With Bangalore Central, we have not only created a truly world-class mall, we have also created a `paradigm shift' in the retail segment that will be tough to emulate." He adds that the layout of the mall will consistently attract visitors and provide opportunities to convert the visits into purchases. Besides, Pantaloon would also get additional revenues by renting the space available in its mall.

Explains Sanjeev Agarwal, Head (Marketing), Pantaloon Retail, "Mall advertising may still be unstructured business but it is a new revenue stream for us. We have already appointed Insighte, the Lintas group company for our mall advertising." After its mall at Bangalore Central, Pantaloon is next targeting city centres in places such as Hyderabad and Pune.

Realising the importance of mall managements, one of the pioneers in introducing malls in the country, the Piramal group, recently created a separate company, Peninsula Facilities Management Ltd, to coordinate its real estate and retail activities across it various group companies.

According to Krish Iyer, CEO, Crossroads (the Piramals' mall brand), "The purpose behind floating this company was to clearly focus on our economies of scale with certain aspects of mall management."

Explains Iyer, "At the Piramal's Pyramid Mega Store in Pune we had a smaller format of a seamless mall. We allowed other brands to be retailed along with our own Pyramid offerings."

Today Pyramid has graduated from being a mere departmental store. It has three sub-brands under it. Added Iyer, "Today we have a mix in our operations. About one-third of the space is devoted to our brands while for the rest of the space, we operate on a revenue sharing basis."

The trend of mall developers turning retailers and retailers themselves turning to mall management seems to be here to stay. As Iyer observes, "With time more and more mall developers will turn to retailing. There will be more real estate owners who will become retailers themselves."

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