Swedish home furnishing retailer IKEA opened the doors to its Navi Mumbai store on Friday. This is IKEA’s second store in India and the first big format store in Maharashtra. Spread across 5.3 lakh sq. ft., the store will remain open every day between 11am and 9pm.
The IKEA Navi Mumbai store opened its doors at 11 am on Friday and saw several customers walking in during the inauguration itself. IKEA said in a statement that the Navi Mumbai store will house the largest children’s area ‘Småland’ in IKEA globally, along with one of its largest 1,000-seater restaurants with almost 100% locally sourced food range.
After the Navi Mumbai store, two more IKEA city center stores will open during 2021 to be able to reach more people in Mumbai. IKEA is already present online in Hyderabad and Pune has the ambition to reach 100 million Indian customers by 2022.
In October 2018, it broke ground for its third store in Bengaluru, which was supposed to open in 2020 as well. However, there is no update yet on the progress with the Bengaluru store. IKEA had acquired 14 acres of land behind the Nagasandra Metro Station in 2017.
When IKEA entered India nearly seven years ago, it said that it would open at least seven more large format stores across the country, along with several more store touch points. The fourth store is slated to be in Gurugram.
#IKEA opens its #Mumbai store, welcomes first set of customers. This is it's second store in India after the #Hyderabad store @thenewsminute @dhanyarajendran pic.twitter.com/BsmzCLkAKC
— Shilpa S. Ranipeta (@Shilparanipeta) December 18, 2020
The Navi Mumbai store is located on the Thane-Belapur Road and offers 7,000 home furnishing products, along with ideas and inspiration for every home.
IKEA said it has visited more than 2000 homes in Mumbai to develop an understanding of life at home in the city. “The learnings have been reflected in 50 room sets, 6 homes and 10 vignettes depicting life at home in Mumbai. IKEA aims to provide solutions for small spaces, storage and organizing solutions, multi-functionality for fluid living,” the company said in a statement.
With a planned investment of Rs 6000 crore by 2030, IKEA aims to meet 25 million people in Maharashtra. IKEA will provide over 6000 jobs, of which 50% will be for women. Currently, the store has more than 70% support staff – mainly housekeeping & security – coming from in and around Turbhe and Ghansoli.
Meanwhile, IKEA also continues to develop its omnichannel presence with ecommerce, physical stores and additional services as Click & Collect, Click & Deliver and remote planning.
Peter Betzel, CEO & Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA India said, “Today marks a major milestone as Mumbai is the first Omnichannel market for IKEA in India. The many people can now visit our store, shop online or buy their favorite and affordable products through our ‘Click & Collect’ service. We remain invested and committed to India and stand by our vision ‘to create a better everyday life for the many people’…. We are happy to bring our passion and knowledge for home furnishing to the people of Maharashtra. We want to contribute positively to today’s extraordinary times where home has emerged as the center of our universe.”