GUWAHATI: Retail conglomerate, Future Group will make its foray into Meghalaya for the first time with the opening of a Big Bazaar outlet within a year.
“Our focus in very much on the Northeast with a number of outlets are lined up in the next 18 months starting from Dimapur and Dibrugarh within the next two months. In Meghalaya, we are opening a Big Bazaar in Shillong in a year’s time,” Manish Agarwal, business head (east), Big Bazaar, told The Shillong Times on Monday.
Currently, there are four Big Bazaar outlets in the Northeast, one each in Guwahati, Jorhat, Agartala and Silchar.
“We will be opening many more stores. Tezpur, Nagaon, Sivasagar and Bongaigaon will have one each within 15 months while Imphal, Itanagar, Aizawl and Kohima will have one each in the next 18 months,” Agarwal said.
Sources say that the group plans to add two more Big Bazaar oulets in Guwahati.
Apart from the hypermarket chain (Big Bazaar), the Kishore Biyani-led group also owns brands such as Brand Factory and Central.
In fact, the Northeast became part of the group’s latest offering (Central) with the opening of its fashion and lifestyle store, Guwahati Central, here on Sunday.
The four-storey outlet spread over one lakh square feet and set up at a cost of around Rs 350 crore, will have over 500 brands on offer.
Future Group is in talks with the Assam government for setting up a food park as well.
“The discussions started prior to the global investors’ summit in February here,” Agarwal said.
Asked about the scale of investment made by the group in the Northeast, he said there are two kinds of investments, one relating to development of infrastructure and the other to interiors and stocks.
“While it would be difficult to share the data on the retail investment made by the group so far, we generally invest Rs 5000 per square foot. But investments are growing in the Northeast,” Agarwal said.
