We have a plan to open nine more stores by this Diwali: Hemant Agarwal
We have a plan to open nine more stores by this Diwali: Hemant Agarwal

V- Bazaar is an emerging name as far as value market is concerned, kindly shed light on journey of the brand to Indian market. Also shed light on fashion and lifestyle market  in India, what are possible growth drivers in this segment?

 Starting with the most important factor propelling to the industry’s growth in broader sense and the growth of V-Bazaar precisely according to me is value for money. In today’s world when it is customer oriented market and every penny is very important. Customers are very well aware these days, before they buy they visit various stores and where they get best offer they shop.

V-Bazaar started its operation in May 2016 with its first store in Lakhisarai, Bihar. We got tremendous response in our all product categories. We kept on moving and in 2016-17 we opened 14 stores in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Other factors what I think is customers services and availability of a huge varieties under one roof makes it very different from others.

Kindly shed light on your distribution in terms of the total number of outlets and cities? How many  footfalls do you get each month? How many of your stores are franchise stores?
Currently we operating 16 stores in 15 cities covering total area of 1,20,000 sq ft. The company plans to open 14 more stores in the current financial year 2017-2018, out of which 10 new stores MOU has been completed. We have an approximate average footfall of 25000​ customers per day. We don't have any franchised store operational now, we are not into franchise model.

 What are consumption trends and growth rate in this segment?

​​ Indian retail is the fastest growing market in the world due to its economic growth. The Indian retail market is expected to grow at 12 per cent per annum, modern trade would expand twice as fast at 20 per cent per annum as per (INDIA BRAND EQUITY FOUNDATION)

The two major trends in the fashion retail market of our group are as follows: Quality at an affordable price, Trendy high street fashion
Pls shed light on your consumer profile? How are the customer profile and the tastes and aspirations of your customers changing over the years? What are the various initiatives you have taken to look after your customer better? 

Clearly the perception is simple that the customer is God and we at V-Bazaar tries our best to serve the customer better and better. Starting with flexible exchange policies, as we see here the customers mostly stuck off, we give higher duration and at the same time we keep customers informing about our forthcoming offers and product on different occasions by our ATL and BTL activities. We want to make the customers feel to be a part of the V-Bazaar family.

As our primary target group of customers are from the middle classe we target more on word of mouth publicity rather than having a huge advertisement budget and the expenses of which also has to be borne by customer only.
Tastes and aspirations of the customers do change over the years but however, the profile is concerned we basically target the middle class and it forms the major portions of the population and if you notice which has not changed much.
Please provide details about brands, product range and services available at your stores. Also, can you give us sales split between different brands? Are the products offered at your stores imported or India-made? What is the sales split between these? Also, shed light on your categories? 

​ Majority of our products are made by the Indian manufacturers, we do have imported goods which we procure from traders and agents in India. We have a lot of options in terms of brands and product offerings.

We at V-Bazaar have multi brands. Some of the brands are our private labels which are Wandle, Wesbok, Weeny etc.. Product range for apparels start from Rs 50/- and goes upto Rs 6000 for exclusive suits and premium sarees etc. We tend to provide the best services to our customers in terms of hospitality and we have been getting good response from our customers at store.

Among our brands the best performing brands are :Sparky,Cavana, Nexty,Bouncer, Amy etc. The men’s division consists of around 40% of the sale value followed by ladies, kids and non-apps. At V-Bazaar we maintained 5 major categories which are as follow:.

1.    Men’s Category

2.    Ladies Category

3.    Kids Boy’s Category

4.    Kids Girl’s Category

5.    General Merchandise

In near future we plan to expand a category of wedding collections for the entire family. At V-Bazaar, we maintained a huge number of products starting from general merchandising of utensils, households, furnishings to footmart and fashion accessories as belts, purses, sunglasses etc.

​ What is your strategy on location for your retail stores?

When we look for new stores, we generally choose the same geographical zone in which we are currently operating. This helps us to understand better the customers taste in terms of fashion and their demand. Keeping budgets in our mind we generally open our store in high street areas with higher footfall. Currently we are not into shop in shop model but we are open to any good ideas.
At last, kindly highlight your growth plans?

-We are basically brick and motar stores and our line of business is somewhat different from that of the online one’s. As of now neither we have a plan to go online nor we are looking for franchise mode. But obviously like any other ambitious business house we are also looking forward in increasing our top line and obviously for that we need to grow. We have a plan to open nine more stores by this Diwali that will bring the total number of our stores to 25 and almost all the stores will be in northern India as it’s a vast area to cover.


 


 


 


 

Stay on top – Get the daily news from Indian Retailer in your inbox
Also Worth Reading