On July 19, IKEA, world’s largest furniture retailer, will open its doors in India, with the launch of its first store in Hyderabad. The store spread over 4 lakh sq ft in the upmarket Cyberabad area has seen an investment of ₹1,000 crore.

The store has been designed with inputs from teams that visited a thousand homes across cities to study people’s preferences and needs. The Swedish major took four years to set up the store, with almost three years going for land acquisition, design and construction, product sourcing and recruitment.

It will have 1,000 employees, 50 per cent of them women, said Peter Betzel, the new India CEO.

The company will source up to 20 per cent of products from local manufacturers. It will offer a range of 7,500 products, several of them made to typical Indian needs, jointly by teams here and in Sweden, Betzel explained to a group of journalists at the store today.

The Telangana government has provided several sops and support in identifying land for the IKEA project, which it has been projecting as a coup in big brand foreign nvestment.

Next store in Mumbai

Expressing satisfaction over IKEA’s experience in the country, the CEO felt more rationalisation of regulatory framework and labour laws across States was necessary for retailers’ accelerated growth.

He said the next IKEA store would come up in Mumbai early next year.

The Hyderabad store will offer home delivery and help in assembling its products. About 150 staff will drive the service. It has tied up with logistics major Gati, said John Achillea, MD.

Peter Betzel said IKEA would offer online shopping and open up multichannel transactions post the launch of the Mumbai store.

“Our emphasis will be on experiential shopping at stores to a transition to online in the future. The need for online shopping is growing in home furnishings. In some countries it accounts for 6-10 per cent of the total sales. It is offered in a dozen countries.”

The Hyderabad store will have a 1,000-seater restaurant, too.

49 more stores coming

IKEA is targeting 49 large cities to set up big-format stores. It is also exploring smaller stores, increasing local sourcing to 50 per cent and bringing in technology, he said.

The Swedish giant has got the nod to open 25 stores with an investment of around ₹1,000 crore per store over 10 years.

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