TruMart opens up in Pune

PUNE: Convergence is the name of the game for the Piramal''s retail foray. The group, which today launched its food and grocery retail chain TruMart, will aggressively combine this with its existing retail presence through Piramyd Megastore or Cross Roads.
TruMart will now be the food and grocery chain for all Piramyd''s family of stores. It comes in two formats, a small convenience store, called TruMart Daily, which will work longer hours, opening earlier and closing later.The larger format store, TruMart, is targeted at the weekly or monthly grocery buyer. And all of these stores could be a stand alone or located within an existing Megastore or Crossroads.
"We will not be franchising it; all stores will be company-owned. Our experience has been that franchising dilutes quality and the brand," KN Iyer, director and CEO, Piramyd Retail, said.
He said a new brand was created since the existing two, Piramyd Megastore and Crossroads, targeted the premium segment. Food and grocery are targeted at a wider market, and locating the outlet within an existing department store would ensure more frequent footfall.
"We are defining this category as food, household, personal car (FHPC), which is the definition for a supermarket.We began this as a pilot in the Kalyaninagar area about 18 months ago. It has been successful and today we have opened our first TruMart in Pune. Over time, all of the food and grocery business in existing stores will move to the TruMart brand," Mr Iyer said.
Eventually, a private brand, TruMart brand will also emerge, even as it adds bakery to its initial outlets.
Piramyd Retail has lined up a Rs. 200 crore investment for the next three years to roll out the new chain in the Pune-Mumbai area. Starting with Pune, it will set up another 15 stores in the city, nine of them in the next six months. Mumbai will have five this year so that by March 06, there will be 20 TruMarts in Mumbai and Pune, in new and existing locations. Of these, eight will be within stores and 12 wil be stand alone.
"We want to saturate a region before we go to other parts of the country. This gives us economies of scale and amortises costs. We will convert our outlet in Crossroads, in Mumbai, into a Trumart in a few weeks. By August, we are opening a large Piramyd Megastore in Delhi where we will take TruMart, too," Mr Iyer said.
Expansion will also happen in the Piramyd Megastore outlets. Mr Iyer said they have already signed up 12 properties in the past four months, seven in Delhi, one each in Ludhiana, Ahmedabad and Mumbai and two in Pune. In the next three years, 16 megastores will be added.