GVK One

I was travelling two weeks ago on my second official trip to Hyderabad since Nov. 2009 and was naturally intrigued by this imposing structure, rightly called GVK ONE. This Mall which has been in the making since 2005, finally opened for business in full-swing during late last year. Spread over 625,000 sft across four floors and two levels of basement parking that could collectively accomodate over 700 cars and 500 two wheelers, this is by far the largest Mall in the central part of Hyderabad and would remain so for some time to come. The promoter, as the name goes is none other than the GVK Group – leaders in Infrastructure and Power business in India, who manage various TAJ hotels in the city and also operate the Mumbai Airport and recently bought a controlling stake in Bengaluru International Airport (BIAL). I am told that the name of the mall is known to be based on two reasons – one, that it is the address of the Mall on the Banjara Hills and the other being that this is the first Mall project of the group. The location itself is stunning - bang in the middle of the most affluent locality in the city, where according to a survey made a couple of years ago by the Group, the average household annual income among residents is over INR 5 lakhs. From the choice of the paint on the exterior and interior walls to the floor tiles, everything has been done to perfection and the most important nuance is the lighting on the ceiling of the atrium – that is formed as the letters G.V.K.

The anchors include Shoppers Stop, INOX Cinemas and the city’s first Hard Rock Café (there was one within the International Departures of the swanky Hyderabad Airport that is managed by the rival GMR Group, but that was shut down some time ago due to low patronage). There are several other vanilla stores in Retail and F&B which include Calvin Klein, Benetton, Esprit, Bossini, Pepe, Mango, a local Jeweler, Café Coffee Day, Juice Booster, etc. The biggest attraction is a wonderful aquarium that is placed in the main atrium on the Upper Ground which attracts a number of curious visitors – young in age and by heart, and there is a customary photo that is taken alongside (something that we Indians love, irrespective of where we are – at places of worship to shopping centers!).

The mall has a lower ground floor which is on the level of the road as the road enters through the Banjara Hills and then an Upper Ground Floor as the road goes up. Interestingly, both floors have awesome visibility from outside and this helps the Mall developer to lease both floors at attractive rates. And for the Brands, needless to say gives good visibility. This is increasingly seen in India across various Malls of late. Soon, this would become more a fashion, than a natural gradient of the road – hope it is not another scam like the CAM in some cases…

Shoppers Stop is spread over 60,000 sft across two floors from the ground – this is the third outlet for the business in Hyderabad city based on encouraging trends – the city’s shoppers are quite trendy and fashion conscious and contrary to the rather shy image that they carry, people actually shop for colorful stuff – from apparel to accessories, furniture to cars. Incidentally, over 60% of those who shop at Shoppers Stop are members of the privilege program “First Citizen”, the largest retail loyalty program in the country. This could be a big driver of footfalls into this mall, time will prove though. Hard Rock Café, the cult pub and restaurant is located on the Upper Ground, but with a direct access – that means, you don’t have to get into the Mall to enter the place, quite common world over. INOX, spread over 40,000 sft with six screens, is tucked away on the top floors – a straight forward approach on the elevator on any floor would take you to the cinema. There is a large food court serving local as well as national and international delicacies and seems to picking pace among shoppers and visitors.

What I am surprised though is the circulation – very plain and simple. Each floor plate is not more than 40,000 sft and starts and ends in the same place. As one enters, you could walk on the left side or right and just keep walking. Every 5 meters, there is an entry to a shop and every 50 meters there is a breaking point. For all the brouhaha that was created, the layout seemed too simple. I am not a believer in complicated walkthroughs within the mall, but this one is just too simple. Also, adjacency planning between the brands could have been better. There is almost no logic to my mind why certain brands are placed next to each other. In Mall Management, one of the most important focus areas is to place the brands correctly, as much as possible. There has to be a value-addition from every placement – the most popular ones in the corners and the just-popular ones on the way, so shoppers walk as much as possible and are invited into the smaller ones. In India, the trend is reverse – the most popular ones, especially apparel and sports brands want to occupy the entry points! All said and done, what I liked best was the placement of our café – yes, Café Coffee Day is located right at the entrance with an independent access. This is the second café within a 2 sq. km radius in Hyd. (compared to many such in other cities like Bangalore, Mumbai & Delhi).

Overall, I believe it is a good package for the retail-starved Hyderabad – beyond the stand alone Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle stores and Hyderabad Central in Begumpet, there is pretty much nothing for shoppers in the centre of the city. InOrbit at Cyberabad is yet to gain steam, until which am sure GVK One will attract more onlookers and some serious shoppers. Good luck to the team that’s running the show.

Transit - The New Location

Images Group, India's largest publishing house that specialises on Retail and related activities recently conducted the Food Forum India, an annual conclave where the Indian and International Food and Beverages industry congregates to discuss and share thoughts on current issues and best practices. This is one of those very rare events where Pepsi and Coke come together under one roof - yes, Pepsi is the host for the main event while Coke sponsors the Golden Spoon Awards. It was my privilege to be on a Panel discussion aptly titled "Transit - The New Location" under the aegis of National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), an umbrella entity that is spearheading the needs and wishes of its members.

 At Food Forum India (FFI) 2010 held at The Renaissance, Mumbai, the stalwarts of the industry not only spoke about processing and manufacturing food items but also identifying the correct locations for positioning the products. An engaging session probed into the new-age transit locations as the venue for good food retailing. Sharing statistics and opening the session, Sanjay Coutinho, COO, Barista and anchor for the session Samir Kuckreja, president, NRAI and CEO and MD, Nirula's noted, “There are currently 454 airports in India of which 16 are the international ones. Also there are 18 million commuters in the railway itself of whom 20 per cent travel in the AC coaches. There are already 7,000 railway stations in India and 50 world class stations are being budgeted for in the near future. Thus, the opportunities thrown up by these new locations are endless.”

With travel becoming an important part of the lifestyle segment, more and more food industry players are exploring newer avenues, such as airports, for setting up their outlets. Anoop Sequeira, CEO, Brand Calculus (Booster Juice) stated, “Transit locations such as airports help us to generate business 24-hours as compared to other locations for which we pay rentals for 24-hours but can be open only for 12 hours or so. I agree that the rentals are high but at the same time the opportunity of business is higher.”

S Shriram, GM, Key Accounts, Cafe Coffee Day pointed out that even the location of the outlet within the airport area needs to be strategically chosen. He also brought up the issue about railway platforms being another good alternative location and thus questioned, “Almost 18 million passengers travel by train but do we have enough resource to satisfy even a fraction of them with our products and services? Also, the consumer at the airport or the railway stations are hard pressed for time. So we also need to consider how fast we can deliver to the consumer whose flight is getting announced and the likes.” Agreeing to the views put forward by Shriram, Zahir Abbas, associate director, Travel retail, Technopak Advisors suggested, “A lot more infrastructure needs to be built in the near future.”

Jagvir Singh Rana, Director - Operations and Business Development, HMSHOST Services India said “Having an outlet at the airports requires more hard work in terms of getting clearance for the staff but the traffic is good.” Kuckreja added, “Also there are certain rules to be kept in mind while packaging the food items at these transit locations.”

Rajeev Panjwani, CEO, Travel Food Services, concluded, “The display has to be attractive for the consumer. Also the store design needs to be more open in order to help a customer to move around with his travel baggage. It is all about convenience and now we are also looking at more specific opportunities like catering to the passengers at the delayed flight stage.”

‘Coca Cola Golden Spoon Awards’– Images awards for excellence in food retailing - presented on 4th March at the Food Forum India evening of food titans was a grand corporate ceremony with award presentations by business leaders, and high-gloss entertainment by celebrities. The Awards followed strict international benchmarks in deciding the top honors with IRIS as Knowledge Partner. The selection process involved a countrywide poll to short-list the nominees, jury nominations, self-nominations by short listed nominees followed by performance assessment by IRIS analysts. The awards Jury consisted of prominent names from the branded food industry and business analysts, modern trade teams of global & Indian food majors including Hindustan Unilever, Britannia, Cadbury, Cargill, Dabur, Darshan Foods and Forum of Indian Food Importers.

The ‘Coca Cola Golden Spoon Awards’ acknowledge excellence in food retailing & food services – retailers adopting best practices at the back end and front end – including customer relations, smart strategy, operational efficiencies and innovation across value chain. While Big Bazaar was one of the biggest winners on the night, the audience was mesmerised with scintilating performances by renowned singer Shibani Kashyap and stand up comedian Ash Chandler.


Big Bazaar’s award as the ‘Most Admired F&G Retailer of the Year: Large Formats’ was recognition for the company’s tremendous growth in a challenging financial environment from 110 stores in 2008-09 to 125 today. Big Bazaar narrowly beat out a competitive field of nominees for the award, which included Spencer's Hyper, Easyday Market, Hypercity, Star Bazaar, More MegaStore and Spar.

Walmart's India Retail venture with Bharti Retail's Easy Day with 56 stores won them the Coca Cola Golden Spoon Award for the 'Most Admired Food & Grocery Retailer of the Year: Small and Medium Formats'.

Pantaloon Retail claimed the ‘Most Admired F&G Retailer of the Year: Private Label’ on the back of news that its Future Group division is set to register a turnover of Rs.440 crores for the sale of food and packaged food through its private label. Other nominees in the category were Reliance Retail, Spencer's Retail, Aditya Birla Retail, Max Hypermarket and Trent.

The ‘Most Admired F&B Retailer of the Year: Cafes, Juice Bars & Parlours’ category was one of the most competitive of the night. Cafe Coffee Day was voted the winner by industry members ahead of Barista, Costa Coffee, Baskin Robbins and Jus Booster Juice.

The award for India’s best premium restaurant went to Indigo (‘Most Admired F&B Retailer of the Year: Premium Restaurant) while Dominos Pizza won the award for ‘Most Admired F&B Retailer of the Year: QSR Foreign Origin’ among stiff competition from KFC, McDonalds, Subway and Pizza Hut.

The Coca-Cola Golden Spoon Awards recognise excellence in food retailing and honour the brave innovative spirit of leaders in the dynamic Indian food retail and service industry. Food retailers are leading a change that has redefined consumption habits in India, resulting in a change in food tastes, preferences, awareness, consciousness and choices over the past few years.

T3 - Explore!

I was among the few fortunate to be present at the recent unveiling of the identity of the most promising retail venture of the century – I am not exaggerating… indeed, it is. I am referring to the upcoming new Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), Delhi. The Terminal Building spread over 50 lakh square feet would be able to cater to over 30 million passengers per annum (mppa) in 2010 and would be able to scale upto 54 mppa by 2020! By far, this would be among the top five biggest airport terminal buildings in the world and possibly the biggest in India. The Airport is ably managed by the GMR Group – leaders in Infrastructure, Power, etc, who also manage the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Hyderabad. Many would know that recently, the Hyderabad Airport was ranked the fifth best airport in the world in the five-fifteen million passengers a year category. The council, an international association of the world's airports, has also ranked the IGIA as the Best Improved Airport in the Asia Pacific region. All this, thanks to the persistent efforts of the GMR Airports Team, ably lead by none other than Mr. Kiran Grandhi, Chairman, GMR Airports Division.

The new Terminal 3 which had a different Retail Identity earlier now has a new one developed by Holland based Marketing, Branding and Communication agency THEY. The new identity efforts, apart from choosing the Retail and Commercial partners, has been led by Suredj Autar, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Strategic Planning for GMR Airports, The two day event was chaired on Day One by Mr. Martin Moodie, founder and editor of The Moodie Report, the world’s most trusted travel retail news website that never sleeps. Martin introduced Suredj as Supersonic Suredj - “He’s an ebullient, live-wire, irrepressible character who knows only one speed – supersonic.” Indeed, he is. I have known Suredj for over four years now since his previous role as Managing Director of HMSHost when he launched the operations in India and led other initiatives in the Asia Pacific Region.

Back to the retail identity. The Dutch agency THEY’s founder Van der Vorst remarked - “For us, Explore exactly captures the diversity and forward-looking way in which India is progressing – and at the same time it’s a promise, a link to the customer; an invitation to the customer to explore all the great things that can be found in an airport.” The colorful logo was also unveiled and the various commercial partners would be able to integrate the new identity with their own, whether it’s a store that sells books, music, duty free products or coffee (like Café Coffee Day). What I loved most about the new name is its flexibility – it goes well with almost every category!

The Retail areas are spread over 2 lakh square feet (that’s as big as a Mall, someone remarked in the audience). The retail areas have been carefully planned across the domestic and international areas. The common check-in area would have over 100 counters that could be used interchangeably for Domestic and International Airlines (similar to how it is at Bengaluru International Airport where I worked earlier and which introduced this concept two years ago). Focus has been given to walking areas, seating and shopping/dining areas such that each of it is visible from the other. So, when a passenger is walking, he/she cannot miss the shopping areas and the seating areas are close to the dining areas. While most of the shopping areas are on the same floor when a passenger enters, the food courts are a level above. There are two premium coffee outlets planned – a Coffee Day Square in the Domestic Departures and Coffee Bean Tea Leaf in the International Departures. And expect a host of F&B options – from Subway to Mc Donalds, Chinese delicacies to local cuisine, there is everything for everyone’s pallet. The Retail areas would sell almost everything possible, including an exclusive area for Luxury Retail and the highlight is going to be the much expected “Dilli Bazaar”, an area that would focus on the local favorites from the city.

Later in the evening, there was a cocktail, sit down dinner hosted by none other than the Chairman himself which was preceded by a short interaction. When Martin Moodie who was on the stage with him asked how good the new Terminal 3 would be, Mr. Grandhi promised it would be 10/10 to a thundering applause and cheer from the crowd. When I met him later in the evening to introduce myself and to shake hands, he got up from his seat with a smile – a charming gentleman that he is, I couldn’t have expected more! His effervescent personality resonates in his organization and his team. Everyone was so cheerful and enthusiastic and like them, I am also eagerly looking forward to the grandest retail opportunity of our times… Watch this space for more updates over the next months.