The largest retailer in India, Pantaloon Retail, is planning to spin off the majority of its business into a separate entity called Future Value Retail.
Future Value will consist of Pantaloon’s Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar chains, which represent 55 per cent of the company’s turnover, reported The Economic Times.
“We have been evaluating the option of creating a new entity for our value retailing businesses,” said Kishore Biyani, CEO of Pantaloon’s parent company Future Group.
Pantaloon is trying to structure the new entity to enable a possible future joint venture with a foreign retailer, according to The Times.
The new Future Value Retail system will unite the back-end supply chains all Future Group stores, from Pantaloon outlets to the two Bazaars, while the front-end chains will remain separate.
Big Bazaar is Pantaloon’s hypermarket format with 109 stores, while Food Bazaar is a supermarket format with 152 stores, most of them next to or inside a Big Bazaar outlet.
The two chains are expected to hit combined revenue of Rs50bn over the 2008/09 financial year.
