Global furniture and home furnishing retail giant IKEA will invest Rs. 3,000 crore in Karnataka over the coming years.
The Swedish company has just opened its first big box format store in Bengaluru and will set up more large format stores and small outlets in malls to gain a wider footprint across the country.
The company earlier announced it is going to invest Rs. 10,500 crore to set up stores across major cities, including Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Susanne Pulverer, CEO, IKEA India, said that IKEA is growing in India and continues to be a strong market. The large projects take time due to multiple approvals. We will have more projects coming up in Bengaluru either through a lease model or by buying land and setting up our own facilities.
She further added that the company plans to focus on Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR in the first phase of store roll out in India.
IKEA will also increase its local sourcing from the country from its current 27 per cent to 50 per cent in the future. It is also looking at diversifying its supply chain to reduce its dependency on one geography.
“We have to keep production closer to the market and customers and also generate employment. We had a clear strategy of sourcing locally before the pandemic and it only got reinforced during the disruption,” she said.
Sourcing from India for over 35 years, IKEA has been working with around 60 suppliers.
