Aditya Birla Retail (ABRL), which operates ‘More for you’ food and grocery retail chain across the country, despite economic turmoil affecting the retail sector in the country, has confirmed that it will go ahead with investments in this sector and open more stores in the coming year.

“We have not scaled back our investment plans but our expansion could get delayed by a few months,” said Thomas Varghese Chief Executive Officer Aditya Birla Retail. He was talking to media persons on sidelines of a conference held in Mumbai, yesterday. ABRL in 2007 had announced investment of Rs 9,000 crore in its retail business.ABRL is currently operating its food and grocery business in two formats – supermarkets and hypermarkets. While, ‘More for you’ retail chain is currently operating 670 supermarket across several states, it is operating two hypermarket stores Mysore in Karnataka and Vadodara in Gujarat. While, most of supermarket stores and one hypermarket store (Mysore), came as a consequence of acquisition of Hyderabad-based food and grocery retail chain “Trinethra” in early part of 2007, balance stores were set up as a part of organic expansion of the retail chain. All the stores of Trinethra chain were later rebranded as “More for you” stores.

“Presently, we have 670 supermarkets and 2 hypermarkets. We now plan to open 12 more hypermarkets during FY 10 in various parts of the country,” said Varghese. ABRL is planning to add 12 hypermarket and 200 supermarket format stores during 2009-10. The product offerings of the supermarkets include a wide range across fresh fruits and vegetables, groceries, personal care, home care, general merchandise and a basic range of apparels. Hypermarket stores also have a strong emphasis on general merchandise, apparels and CDIT.

Apart from Southern states of Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka, and Taminadu, where Trinethra was already present, the retailer has focused on adding new stores in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, NCR, Rajasthan and West Bengal.Of these, Mumbai alone boasts of 61 stores. Among other areas in the North, while NCR has 41 stores, Jaipur has 15 stores. Among other major locations in the North, the retailer is operating 31 stores in Pune and 18 stores in Ahmedabad.
Interestingly, ABRL is not looking at changing its business model, though it would keep looking at controlling costs, said Verghese. It will also not add any new formats, added Verghese.

ABRL, the retail arm of the Aditya Birla Group, had in 2007 announced an investment of Rs 9,000-crore over a five year period. Aditya Birla group through other group companies is also active in both value, lifestyle, and premium fashion retailing space.