IKEA to enhance sourcing from Telangana State

Hyderabad: Swedish home products major IKEA has drawn up a major plan for India operations including expanding sourcing from Telangana. The Hyderabad store, one of the three centers under progress, is getting ready and will be most probably operational by April 2018, says a top official at IKEA India, which is investing Rs1,000 crore in Telangana. The world’s largest furniture retailer is strengthening workforce to support operations and confident of multi-fold growth in exports from India.

“We’ll open our first store in India at Hyderabad followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru. We can’t say exact date of launching the store, but hopefully it’ll be before April 2018. Works are in progress. We’ll work closely with state governments wherever we have operations. We’re keen on textiles and agri products from Telangana and will enhance our local sourcing in a time-bound plan. We’re investing Rs1,000 crore in Hyderabad store and it’ll be more or less same for Mumbai and Bengaluru stores as well. However, land cost varies from city to city,” Patrik Antoni, deputy country manager, IKEA India, told the media here on Tuesday.

Ikea plans 25 stores in India by 2025 for a proposed investment of over Rs 10,000 crore. . Its future expansion plan includes Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Haryana and UP. IKEA has been sourcing from India for over 30 years for its global operations, textiles products account for 70 percent of its exports.

John Achillea, MD, IKEA Telangana, said: “We see good demand for mattresses. There’re 100,000 cotton farmers in the country. We’ll tie up with farmers on growing specific herbs, vegetables and other crops as per our requirement. We’ll ensure that there would be local produce more than 30 percent in our store. We’re in the process of identifying entreprenuers and farmers for sourcing products. We have 53 suppliers in the country including two suppliers in Telangana.”

“We have ambitious plan for India. We have been sourcing material, products, etc, from different states and we exported euro325mn. We expect several fold increase in exports volume in next five years as we keep on enhancing our scale of local sourcing. We have plans for skill building for youth as well,” adds Antoni.

Works on the 4lakh sft store are in progress at Madhapur and it’ll have IKEA’s largest restaurant with capacity of 1,000 seats. Achillea adds: “Shoppers can enjoy sumptuous food comprising Swedish and local cuisines. In addition to this, there would be playing space and creche for children. We have already hired over 150 and will take the total headcount to 800 once the store becomes operational.” IKEA has 400 stores in 45 countries with 45,000 employees on its rolls