Biyani to lease out to Reliance,Trent

KISHORE Biyani’s Future Group, with some 20 million square feet (sq ft) of prime retail space under its fold, close to leasing out its properties to the likes of Reliance Retail, Trent, Lifestyle and Shoppers’ Stop. While it is in talks with these retail majors for plain-vanilla lease agreements, the group may also look at a lucrative ‘revenue sharing model’ in the near future. Going forward, the group will add some 15 million sq of additional retail space by calender 2010 and thereby, emerge as a mega developer of retail real estate assets with plans to build 56 malls emerge. The group’s entire retail realty business is handled by its asset management company, Kshitij Investment Advisory Co. Speaking to ET, Kshitij Investment Advisory Co CEO Shishir Baijal said: “We are in dialogue with all leading retailers to lease out our retail space. Depending on the need of the catchment area, each property has its own leasing strategy. Once the leasing strategy is finalised, we target retailers who are best fit for the specific properties.” The deals with retailers are being finalised. Incidentally, Kshitij also aides in project management, execution, construction and leasing of malls to all the formats of the Future Group. The group’s retail formats holds the first right of refusal for these retail space. Kshitij is now developing 15-20 malls where it is leasing out space to the likes of Reliance Retail and Westside. Industry sources feel Kishore Biyani’s overall strategy to build a bank of retail real estate will give it an edge over the other retailers keeping in mind the surging property prices and intense competition. The group has been silently acquiring prime properties across all metros, Tier I as well as in Tier II cities. Kshitij is not only developing the malls, but also intends to operate them through its 50:50 joint venture with Singapore based property developer CapitaLand - Kshitij CapitaLand Mall Management Company. “Each mall is developed as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) in alliance with national or international partners all of who pull in their resources to fund the project,” Mr Baijal said. “Since it is still early days, the group has not chalked out an exit strategy from the SPVs. If we do exit, we expect a return of 25-30%,” he added. The company hopes to use its entire corpus of $430 million by 2010-11 fiscal for development of these malls.

Reliance Retail to start non-veg chain
Gujaratis are good businessmen, so what if they are mostly vegetarians. As Reliance Retail opens its 100th Reliance Fresh stores, it is realising that a large chunk of shoppers may go back from its stores disheartened without their daily dose of kebabs and chicken legs. After a lot of thought, the company has finally decided to set up stand-alone non-veg stores under a separate brand. In most cases, they would be next to Reliance Fresh outlets with separate entry and exit gates and in some cases, they would be in entirely different locations, reports Mansi Bhatt from Ahmedabad.

Courtesy: EconomicTimes