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Planet M Retail is set to strengthen its hold in the southern markets. Having rationalised its store count to 70, the Videocon Group promoted company now plans to ‘cautiously’ expand. Most of its new stores will be in Bangalore where it intends to almost double the number.
Sanjay Karwa, CEO, Planet M Retail, said, “Bangalore is going to be our base for expansion as we want to take up the store count from the current 11 in this city to 20 and strengthen our hold in the southern markets. Planet M already has 5 stores in Hyderabad and 2 in Chennai.”
“We would like to expand in markets where we are already present to save on logistics and infrastructure costs as this will help in growing our top line,” he added.
Planet M is now focusing on mobile phones and toys as its core categories while the entertainment-based products have taken a backseat. “We have shrunk floor space for entertainment products by 50 per cent and would be exiting categories such as DVDs and audio CDs. Gaming and lifestyle are going to be new categories in the future,” he said.
Targeting youth and kids, it has added new categories such as toys to make sure its younger consumers graduate to consoles and gaming products, which it intends adding later.
It has also decided to tap into synergies with the Videocon Group’s other retail formats such as Digiworld in the mobile phone category. “We are planning on centralised sourcing with Digiworld for mobile handsets to leverage better margins,” he added.
Videocon Group had acquired Planet M from Bennett, Coleman & Co almost five years ago when it had forayed into telecom sector. At that time Digiworld was not present, while its other retail format — Next — was still at a nascent stage and restricted to consumer durables. Today, it has Digiworld and Planet M which are urban-centric while Next has been relegated to tier 2, 3 cities.
Meanwhile, Diwali sales has boosted the morale of retailers such as Planet M. “The gloom and doom prior to the festival season have been replaced by smiles during the five days of Diwali sales as the telecom category managed to perform better than most other categories,” he added. With sales turnover of Rs 200 crore this fiscal, Planet M is on the cusp of breaking even in its operations.
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