Bengaluru: Bengaluru will soon find itself on the “locations” tab of IKEA’s website. The Swedish retailer has acquired 14 acres of land here in Bengaluru, where they will be setting up their third store in the country, the first two being in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
They plan to build a 4.5 lakh sq ft store at the site which is located at Nagasandra on Tumkur Road. Here they will directly employ 800 people, half of whom will be women. IKEA is expecting a footfall of more than 5 million annually at the new store.
IKEA has partnered with DISHA, in order to train women to work in the retail sector, so that they are ready to be employed by the company. During the inaugural programme of the Vendor Development and Investors Summit 2017, the CEO of IKEA India, Peter Betzel said that they wanted to provide sustainable and affordable homes to the people so that they could lead better lives. He also said that they planned to open three more stores in Bengaluru in the near future.
Speaking more about the store, he said that they had been working to increase their supplier base adding that they have had nearly 50 suppliers in Karnataka for over 40 years. “This will help our presence in the state grow, once the store is up and running”, he said, adding that there were 45000 people already working in their supply chain network.
The company is currently sourcing mattresses and sofas from Karnataka and with the setting up of the new store, they want to ensure that they continue to source locally and also plan to expand this in the future.
