Vishal Retail slumps on debt concerns. The company is in process of liquidating some properties to pare off debt over the next couple of quarters. "We are trying to reduce the debt close to about 40% in this financial year," said chief executive officer Dinesh Malpani.

Malpani expects Q3 to be somewhere close to the tune of about 15% growth over Q2 numbers. Moreover, Vishal Retail has nine stores operational and most of them are EBITDA positive. He indicated that all its stores to be EBITDA positive by Q4.

Here is the edited transcript of his interview to CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What is the current debt situation? What is the plan to reduce it?

A: As far as the debt is concerned, we are trying to liquidate certain properties to take away the debt. The current debt servicing and interest has been taken care by the internal accruals.

Q: By when do you expect the properties, which are under process for being liquidated, to be completed?

A: It should take us a couple of quarters to complete this entire process.

Q: Could you just give us the exact debt amount? What's the size of properties which you are looking to liquidate? How much are you looking to liquidate?

A: These properties are more land banks in different locations, which are under negotiations. I might not be able to disclose the value of the property at this point of time. But the land banks are under discussion.

Q: How much are you looking to reduce your debt by way of these land banks?

A: We are trying to reduce the debt close to about 40% in this financial year.

Q: What is your view going forward? What kind of footfalls are you seeing? What's your forecast from here because Q3 should be a seasonally stronger quarter for you?

A: Our Q2 growth versus Q1 has been a very decent, up 42%. We expect the growth-run to be strong QoQ. At this point of time, we expect Q3 to be somewhere close to the tune of about 15% growth over Q2 numbers.

This is a positive sign as far as the format is concerned. Currently, our disproportionate focus is to get the stores and format going correct, and then scale up the operations.

Q: Are you planning to open up some new outlets?

A: At this point of time, we have nine stores operational and most of our stores are EBITDA positive. We want to spend a couple of quarters more fine tuning the existing format. The same goes for the expansion plans after that.

Q: Two of your stores are not EBITDA positive. When will they be EBITDA positive?

A: By Q4, all our stores should be EBITDA positive.

Q: Sometime back, there were rumours about some difference with the PE player TPG with whom you have a tie-up. Could you clarify with respect to that?

A: There aren’t any differences between us and TPG. We generally have some operational discussions going on.

Q: Don’t you have any plans of TPG trying to infuse some more money or anything else?

A: No, not at this point of time.