Indiantelevision.com Team

(19 January 2008 9:00 pm)

BANGALORE: Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail juggernaut marches on with more and more retail outlets of different formats opening on a regular basis. At last count there were around 450 Reliance Fresh format stores alone, with two new Fresh store launches that happened in North India during the current week. Next week Reliance Retail (RRL) will be opening a 30,000 square foot carpet area (43,000 square feet built up area) TimeOut outlet on the first floor at Ambi Mall, Gurgaon. RRL has also booked 30,000 square feet of carpet area each on the ground and second floors of the same mall. The ground floor is to house Reliance’s apparel brand ‘Trendz’ and the second floor will house its electronic megastore Reliance Digital.

The Gurgoan outlet will stock around 90,000 products and will be the second TimeOut outlet after the one at Bangalore which opened almost two months ago. By March this year, the third Timeout store spanning 20,000 square feet (23,000 square feet built up area) will open in God’s own country – Kerala at Cochin. Reliance TimeOut stocks books, music, stationary, toys and gifts.

The Bangalore store is spread over 21,000 square feet (around 15,500 square feet of carpet area) and is stocked with over 56,000 products. TimeOut Bangalore claims over 30,000 titles in books sourced from national and international publishers. Besides fiction, the range includes self-help, professional development, non-fiction, academic, professional, vernacular books in six languages, popular genres and children’s books. Each of the large format store costs between Rs.100-200 million to set – this is excluding the cost of the real estate and the stocks.

Today, at the Bangalore outlet, the Indian edition of the best selling title – ‘How to manage in a flat world’ was released by one of the authors – Susan Bloch. Philip Whitely is the other writer. “This is the first book launch since we opened forty days ago here at Bangalore. At Reliance TimeOut, we intend to provide a platform for writers to reach out to the people, the readers. There will be more book launches from here and our other TimeOut outlets,” said RRL president and chief executive Bijou Kurien.

As reported earlier, on the first floor of the same location houses RRL’s third Reliance digital store which was opened in late December last year.

Also Read:

Reliance Retail launches 11 pilot retail stores in Bangalore

Reliance Retail launches first books and music specialty store in Bangalore

Reliance Digital launches store in Bangalore