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Asian Paints, St+art turn Ballygunge into Kolkata’s living art district
KOLKATA: Asian Paints, in partnership with the St+art India Foundation, has unveiled St+art Kolkata Festival 2025–26, transforming Ballygunge into a canvas for public art, conversation and everyday creativity through a city-scale initiative titled ADDA: the third space.
Rooted in Kolkata’s long-standing adda and rowak culture, the festival reimagines public spaces as shared “third spaces”: neither home nor street alone, but places of connection, pause and belonging. The project unfolds through a series of outdoor art interventions across south Kolkata, alongside an indoor exhibition at TRI Art & Culture Centre.
At the heart of the festival is the Colour Corridor, an immersive passageway created by Sayan Mukherjee and inspired by Asian Paints’ Chromacosm. Designed as a sensorial welcome zone, it wraps visitors in colour, light and movement, inviting them to slow down and experience art as part of daily life. A specially written Bengali poem, voiced in the accompanying film, adds a lyrical tribute to the city’s pulse, while a typographic façade by street artist Khatra and augmented reality elements extend the experience across TRI’s premises.
Inside TRI Art & Culture Centre, an exhibition featuring works by ten artists blurs the boundary between private and public life. Familiar domestic spaces are reimagined: a bed becomes a gathering spot, a kitchen evokes memory through scent: using colour, texture, sound and smell to explore how connection and belonging are shaped in contemporary cities.
The Ballygunge project builds on Asian Paints’ long-running collaboration with St+art India Foundation, guided by the ethos of Art For All. Previous public art districts in Lodhi, Mahim and other neighbourhoods have similarly sought to pull art out of galleries and into the street, turning overlooked corners into places for collective experience.
“Kolkata has always expressed itself through art, colour and conversation,” said Asian Paints managing director and chief executive Amit Syngle. “With St+art Kolkata and ADDA: the third space, we are bringing art directly into neighbourhood life, showing how colour can shape emotion, memory and belonging.”
St+art India Foundation co-founder and chief curator Giulia Ambrogi, said the festival aimed to make art an everyday encounter rather than a spectacle, reflecting the city’s collective spirit and culture of dialogue.
Running across Ballygunge until January 15, St+art Kolkata 2025–26 invites residents to rediscover their city through tactile installations, poetic murals and shared spaces.
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Reliance Retail FY26 revenue rises 11.8 Per Cent to Rs 3.7 lakh crore
Q4 revenue up 11.1 Per Cent, hyperlocal orders surge 4x, PAT steady
MUMBAI: Reliance Retail isn’t just ringing up sales, it’s ringing doorbells faster than ever. Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) reported a steady FY26 performance, with growth powered by store expansion, a sharp surge in hyperlocal commerce, and consistent traction across grocery, fashion and jewellery. For the full year, revenue rose 11.8 per cent year-on-year to Rs 3,70,026 crore. In the January–March quarter, revenue from operations climbed 11.1 per cent to Rs 87,344 crore, up from Rs 78,622 crore a year earlier.
Operating performance remained stable, with Q4 EBITDA inching up 3.1 per cent YoY to Rs 6,921 crore from Rs 6,711 crore. However, quarterly profit after tax held steady at Rs 3,563 crore. For the full fiscal, PAT grew 11.7 per cent to Rs 13,842 crore.
Expansion remained a key lever. RRVL added 1,564 new stores during FY26, while simultaneously scaling its digital and hyperlocal commerce play. The latter emerged as a standout, with daily orders surging more than fourfold year-on-year in Q4, underlining a clear shift towards faster, localised fulfilment.
In grocery, large-format stores maintained momentum, aided by festive demand and the expansion of Smart Bazaar, which crossed 1,000 stores. Promotional campaigns such as ‘Full Paisa Vasool’ delivered record results, with sales rising 26 per cent YoY.
Digital commerce also picked up pace. JioMart added 5.8 million new users in Q4, nearly doubling its registered base year-on-year. Hyperlocal orders grew 29 per cent sequentially and over 300 per cent annually during the quarter.
Fashion and lifestyle saw steady traction. Ajio recorded a 23 per cent YoY rise in average bill value, while fast-fashion platform Shein crossed 11 million app installs, scaling rapidly with expanding product lines.
The jewellery business added further shine, with average bill value jumping 53 per cent YoY, largely driven by rising gold prices and sustained consumer demand.
Commenting on the shift, RRVL executive director Isha Ambani said hyperlocal commerce has become a structural growth driver, with orders rising more than fourfold over the year.
Looking ahead to FY27, the company is betting on technology to deepen engagement. The focus, Ambani noted, will be on AI-led merchandising, sharper pricing strategies and disciplined execution turning scale into sustained customer value.
In short, the carts are fuller, the clicks are quicker, and the next phase looks less about reach and more about precision.
