Eyeing Growth

In this exclusive interaction with IMAGES Retail, Lalit Agarwal, Chairman & Managing Director of V-Mart Retail Ltd talks about the recovery from pandemic losses and the future of omnichannel retail. Excerpts:

V-Mart Retail Ltd. (V-Mart) recently signed definitive agreements to acquire all of the existing running stores of ‘Unlimited’ from Arvind Lifestyle Brands Ltd (ALBL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Arvind Fashions Ltd (AFL) for cash consideration. As part of the transaction, V-Mart is to acquire the assets of all stores, warehouse, inventory as well as the store brand ‘Unlimited’ at their book value, with an estimated outlay of about ₹150 Cr at closing, and certain contingent payments based on certain milestones achieved in these stores over next few years, post the acquisition.

Through this development, V-Mart will be debuting in South India and helping customers meet their fashion aspirations through its vast array of quality products at affordable prices. The move also fits well with V-Mart’s cluster-based expansion strategy and dramatically shortens the time span required for geographical expansion of this scale in a new big market.

In this exclusive interaction with IMAGES Retail, Lalit Agarwal, Chairman & Managing Director of V-Mart Retail Ltd talks about the recovery from pandemic losses and the future of Omnichannel retail. Excerpts:

As we are in an unpredictable landscape, how should retailers prepare to overcome the destruction caused by the pandemic? Your views.