Heritage Foods Ltd. will invest Rs.60-crore to expand its retail trade in the three southern cities of Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad over the next three years, according to a top official.
“We are planning to open 75 stores in all these cities in 36 months. On an average two stores will be opened in a month,” Dharmender K. Matai, Chief Operating Officer, Heritage Foods’ Retail and Bakery Division told The Hindu. “Chennai would get 35 stores, Bengaluru and Hyderabad 20 stores each. Each store would be spread over an area of 1,500 to 2,000 sq.ft. Some of them would be large stores spread over 15,000 sq.ft.
“After the expansion, our retail floor space would increase to six lakh sq.ft. from the current 3.80 lakh sq.ft.”
Starting with seven retail stores and 300 employees in Hyderabad in 2006, today Heritage Foods has 105 stores employing 2,800 people. It sells fresh fruits and vegetables and grocery.
After the addition of 75 stores, the employee strength would touch 4,000. The food and grocery retail division was likely to close the current financial year with sales revenue of Rs.550 crore. It hopes to clock Rs.1,000 crore by 2020. “It is a difficult task, but we are hopeful of achieving it as we are growing by over 25 per cent year-on-year. The market size of food and grocery is Rs.one lakh crore and modern retail accounts for 1.5 to two per cent. We will be growing through organic and inorganic means,” he said.
Stating their main focus was on expanding operations in these three cities, Mr. Matai said the expansion cost would be met through internal accruals. With exponential growth, the company would achieve break-even soon.
The nine-year-old Hyderabad-based firm is owned by family members of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. The company sells fruits and vegetables, grocery and FMCG under Heritage Fresh through its 105 retail stores.
