Trent, a retail arm of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, is on an expansion drive and plans to expand its store network.
The company, which currently has 66 Westside departmental stores, is planning to add 24 more stores this financial year alone, reported Business Standard.
In the next four years, the retail chain plans to achieve a target of 100 stores of its Westside brand and 50 stores of its hypermarket chain Star Bazaar.
Currently, the Indian retailer has over 100 stores across its three major formats – Westside, Star Bazaar and book and music chain Landmark.
In March, Trent raised Rs2.5bn ($45.44m) through a qualified institutional placement to expand its business.
Trent’s expansion is likely to help the firm clock a top line of Rs50bn ($908.75m) in the next two to three years up from the Rs18.44bn ($335.15m) it posted in 2011-12.
A company executive told the newspaper, "the Westside banner continues to enjoy a strong following from its target audience, and we are keen to scale up presence, subject to availability of acceptable retail locations and estimated viability of store level economics."
"Given our contracted new store pipeline, we expect to close this financial year with between 85 to 90 operating stores," the executive added.
With expansion plans, the company is changing its store expansion strategy to keep costs under check and therefore majority of the 24 new Westside stores will be stand-alone properties.
But the executive said Trent was pursuing both mall as well as stand-alone opportunities depending on location, development scheme, frontage and overall estimated economics.
The company is reportedly opening more Westside stores in tier-II towns such as Dehradun in Uttarakhand and Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh to save on rents and expand its reach.
