IKEA Is Opening Three New Stores In Mumbai & Recruiting 1,000 People

• Swedish retailer IKEA is planning to open three stores in Mumbai. This would include a flagship store and two smaller stores in Navi Mumbai. It also looks to hire 1,000 employees, primarily for the Navi Mumbai store, which is set to open in a year.
• India is “globally very important for IKEA,” Gohil said, adding that it is seeing among new markets the largest expansion plans of the company. IKEA’s € 1.5 billion investment in India.

Swedish retailer IKEA is planning to open three stores in Mumbai. This would include a flagship store and two smaller stores in Navi Mumbai. It also looks to hire 1,000 employees, primarily for the Navi Mumbai store, which is set to open in a year.

Jaxa Gohil, store manager, IKEA India, told BusinessLine that the company had begun to hire a few hundred people for its Navi Mumbai store.

India is “globally very important for IKEA,” Gohil said, adding that it is seeing among new markets the largest expansion plans of the company. IKEA’s € 1.5 billion investment in India.

IKEA India’s larger stores will spread across an area of over 45,000 square meters, while the small-format stores will spread over an area of over 6,500 square meters.

“Mumbai is a major market for us, one of the world’s top 30 cities, and our biggest warehousing, e-commerce, and store investment in India,” Gohil said. The organization has set a goal in three years to reach 100 million people.

In India, IKEA has listed Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru as cities that offer potential and opportunities, said Gohil.

IKEA will be monitoring what it calls several’ customer meeting points’ in these areas, including a variety of touchpoints such as flagship stores, small shops, and online touchpoints.

Bengaluru and Delhi are also planning to launch e-commerce channels shortly. The e-commerce pilot in Pune has already started.

IKEA opened its Mumbai e-commerce site in August, which has attracted 2 million visits so far, Gohil said. It also began e-commerce for Hyderabad, wherein 2018 this opened its only physical store in India.

As localization forms a significant strategy in India, IKEA has launched 500 items for the Indian market, Gohil said. The 50-50 diversity initiative— ensuring that 50% of hired workers are women— is another area of focus for IKEA India, she said.

Accessibility, affordability, and sustainability are some of India’s other areas of focus. There are currently around 1,000 products available in India at less than 200 parts, she said. About affordability, India will have some of the world’s first small-format stores at IKEA, she said.