New Delhi, July 10 - VMart Retail Pvt Ltd has sold a 25 stake to the Aditya Birla group for an undisclosed sum to help fund its expansion plans, the discount-retailer's managing director said on Thursday.
VMart, which operates stores in north and west India, has plans to spend 500 million rupees by March 2009 to have 46 stores this year, Lalit Agrawal told Reuters.
The firm plans to double its revenue in 2008/09 from last fiscal year's 1 billion rupees, he said.
"Ultimately, we needed the money and a big brother to guide us into the future," Agrawal said over the telephone from Lucknow, where he was opening the retailer's twenty-sixth store.
"The investment was done through one of our private investment firms," Aditya Birla spokeswoman Pragnya Ram said, without specifying either the stake or the value.
The diversified Aditya Birla group operates about 270 stores in two retail chains: the south-India based Trinethra, which it acquired in 2006, and More, which it launched in 2007.
India's fragmented retail industry is estimated at $350 billion and is seen doubling by 2015 with modern retail's share rising to a fifth by then.
Along with Indian firms such as Reliance Industries, RPG Enterprises and Bharti Enterprises, overseas chains like Germany's Metro and South Africa's Shoprite Holdings have lined up investments for retail chains.