India Retail News.

Early this Morning, RetailMantra reported that Pantaloon is seeing a pick-up in demand. We initiaed contact with Pantaloon and could confirm the same. Here is what the company has told us.

Pantaloon Retail India has reported over 14.54% growth in sales in May 2009 from its value, home and lifestyle retailing segments.

Sales from Value Retailing, Life Style Retailing and Home Retailing stood at Rs 619.27 crore as against Rs 540.66 crore in May 2008. July-May 2009 sales from these three segments stood at Rs 6,917.29 crore as against Rs 5,341 crore, indicating a rise of 29.5%.

Same store growth under Value Retailing was 8.14%, Life Style Retailing was 8.35% and Home Retailing as -28.27%. [Bad news for the Indian Real Estate Sector]

Pantaloon Retail India (PRIL) has decided to set up 9-10 Central malls in the country within the next 12-18 months. The company will infuse around Rs 25 crore in setting up each Central.

The company plans to expand further in cities like Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Vizag, Raipur and Jaipur. The lifestyle retailing mall, which set up shop in Indore earlier this month, will also come up at places like Surat, Thane and Nashik. This apart, there would be one Central spread over 1 lakh sq ft at Tardeo in South Mumbai.

PRIL also plans to come up with six Big Bazaar and eight Food Bazaar stores by the end of next month. Six eZone and two HomeTown stores are also expected to be rolled out around same time.

The company is planning to raise additional long term funds to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore by issuing securities to various investors by various means, including public or private offerings or qualified institutional placement (QIP). The board of directors of the company has approved the fund raising plan through issuance of equity based securities to various investors.

Last month, it had successful in raising Rs 368 crore through preferential issue of equity shares and warrants. The funds received from this issue will be utilised in expansion plans of the company.

Aditya Birla Retail (ABRL), part of the Aditya Birla Group, plans to set up 80 outlets of 'More' in FY 2009-10. ABRL wants to increase the number of its outlets to 720-730. Subsequently, the company also intends to close down 10-20 existing outlets as part of its clean-up operation.

Presently, the retail major operates 2 hypermarkets at Mysore and Baroda and has shown its interest to set up 6 to 8 in the similar format by March, 2010.

The company posted sales of around Rs 1,150 crore, now aims to achieve a sales turnover of about Rs 1,600-1,700 crore in current fiscal. In FY 2008-09, the company observed a growth of 110%. ABRL has been able to create network of 710 stores in just 20 months, out of this 76 outlets have been closed in the last six months.