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Swedish home furnishing retailer IKEA has closed its Hyderabad store as a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus.
In a communication to its customers, Ikea said: “In the interest of safety of our customers and co-workers, we are temporarily closing the IKEA Hyderabad store for the public with effect from March 20, 3 pm until further notice.”
“If you’re in Hyderabad, Mumbai or Pune, you can still continue shopping at IKEA.in,” it said, adding: “Thank you for your patience and understanding. We wish for you and your family to stay strong and healthy during this time.”
“These are extraordinary times and, as you know, the situation with Covid-19 continues to evolve day-to-day. Our absolute priority is ensuring the health and safety of our customers and co-workers,” IKEA CEO Peter Betzel wrote in a communication to customers. “We have been listening to the advice of the Indian government, guidance from our global group and customer and co-worker feedback. We have taken a day-by-day and hour-by-hour approach, evolving our assessments and decisions as new information becomes available. We are evaluating and making decisions based on the local situation.
All co-workers in our service offices are currently working from home to secure our IKEA country operations and critical capabilities. We ask all co-workers at our Navi Mumbai IKEA store build-up who are dependent on public transport, to work from home and we will continue the dialogue about how best to protect co-workers’ well-being whilst enabling our work and ambitions to continue.”
“Globally, to date, IKEA has announced store temporary closures in heavily impacted countries including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland, and the United States,” Betzel said. “With the situation across China now slowly improving, IKEA stores in China are being gradually reopened, and online buying continues strongly.”
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