Future Group may list home retail arm this week
Future Group said its home furnishing arm, Praxis Home Retail, may be listed on Friday, said sources in the know.
Praxis was formed by demerging the furnishing store chain HomeTown and the group’s on-line furnishing arm Fabfurnish, from Future Retail this year. Investors will get 1 share of Praxis Home for every 20 shares held in Future Retail as per the scheme of arrangement announced last month.
Company executives declined to comment. Last week, the logistics arm of the group, Future Supply Chain (FSC) floated its IPO and its listing is expected soon. The company has been on a reorganizing spree over the past year with a number of mergers and acquisitions such as Bharti Retail, Nilgiris and HyperCity besides some strategic de-mergers within the group.
Earlier this year, Future Group Chief Executive Officer Kishore Biyani said the group had “burnt its fingers” in ecommerce and would not venture into it again for a couple of years. The group has lost nearly Rs 250 crore in an attempt to take its businesses online.
The Future Group, however, recently announced plans to leverage its database of consumer information to funnel relevant consumer data on its digital-enabled services called Tathastu or New Retail 3.0.
“We are also engaging with Twitter, Google and Youtube among others to transform a lot of the online (shoppers) traffic to offline stores,” said Rakesh Biyani, joint MD, Future Retail, discussing their digital transformation at the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) summit in Mumbai, on Wednesday.
Biyani’s presence at the event, addressed by Accenture, IBM and Google, highlighted the company’s arrival on the “technology landscape”.
He stressed on the need to use data to reduce last-mile delivery costs and added that the group was using a number of measures to reduce costs borne by the consumer.
Future Retail competes with Reliance Retail with both chains occupying roughly 13 million square feet of retail space across the country. The telecom arm of Reliance Industries, Reliance Jio, is also looking at a data-enabled model of reaching kirana stores through tie-ups with FMCG brands to offer discounts to users.
India’s retail market was worth $672 billion last year, according to CARE, of which 10 per cent is organised retail. Within organised retail, food and beverages have a 70 per cent share, followed by apparel at 11 per cent and personal care at 8 per cent.