Harman, the audio and infotainment solutions provider, plans to set up 100 franchisee stores in the next 3 years across India, Deccan Herald newspaper reports.

According to the newspaper Anand Ramamoorthy, Managing Director, Harman India said the company would open such stores not only in all metros but also in tier 2 cities like Jaipur and added that they have rejigged their distributor network from one sole distributor to location-based distribution.

“This is our first initiative to go into the franchisee model, away from our earlier model where we had not much synergies with the seller,” Ramamoorthy added.

According to the newspaper report, the $4.4-billion company, which set up its Indian subsidiary in 2009 and is more known in the music industry than to a retail customer, is looking at getting a visible share of market pie and is focusing on consumer products engineered in the country. For this purpose it has launched 25 products that cost less than Rs. 10,000.

“We are already present in 70 Croma stores and more than 100 Reliance retail outlets, apart from shop-in-shop outlets where we sell our products inside another outlet. By the end of FY’13 we would be opening 10 more shop-in-shop stores in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad,” he was quoted as saying.