Tata Group’s Infiniti Retail Ltd, which owns and runs Croma multi-brand electronic products stores across the country, has devised a multi-pronged strategy to stay strong and sustain profitable growth in the light of strong competition from e-commerce players.

The move comes after the success of its turnaround plan initiated two years ago that included revamp of stores, revised marketing strategy, and measures for ease of shopping, among others. The company posted its first-ever profit (about ₹16 crore) last fiscal, even as the e-commerce boom continued to disrupt the consumer retail market in the country. It had a gross income to the tune of ₹4000 crore in FY18.

The company hopes to double the profit in this fiscal and topline growth is anticipated at 25-27 per cent. In its new growth avatar, Croma plans aggressive stores expansion, which will also see the company taking up the franchisee route going forward, a stronger focus on loyalty programmes for deeper customer engagement, greater emphasis on digital advertising and catching up with online in terms of range, among others.

“Actually, we were on the verge of announcing profit after scaling up to about 100 stores a few years ago. But the online business caught the nation and caught us completely off guard. But our investments in turnaround strategy during 2015-17, customer surveys and other slew of initiatives brought us back and we are hopeful of sustaining our profitable growth,” Ritesh Ghosal, Chief Marketing Officer, Infiniti Retail Ltd told BusinessLine .

With Tata’s strong focus on retail business, the board has approved an aggressive expansion of stores. Also, implementation of GST favours expansion as there are no state barriers. With the addition of 30 stores, the company will end this fiscal with 130-131 stores across the country. Almost all stories are generating profit now.

“We plan to add about 70 stores next year to take the total number to 200 and within the next five years, we intend to touch 1,000 stores,” said Ghosal.

Biz model to be revamped

The company is also planning a change in the business model under which it seeks to bring in the franchisee model for stores’ expansion and is doing pilots in two locations. Currently, existing stores are operated by the company.

Investment in improving the order management systems, customer experience related measures and being more effective in poaching footfalls from online businesses that have some gaps, are some of the other major initiatives of the company.

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