Nilgiri to help expand convenience stores chain: Biyani

Future Group CEO, Kishore Biyani after completing the acquisition of Nilgiri Dairy Farm, which operates Nilgiri’s Convenience Store chain in the southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu told CNBC-TV18 that the deal will help the group building a robust convenience stores network. He said: "I think there are synergies on both the side of business; one is the convenience store chain side where n we have our own KB's Fairprice; we just acquired Big Apple and we retained that name. For us Nilgiri is another acquisition on the Southern India side. We will expand our chain of convenience stores through this network.""On the FMCG side they are into dairy, they are into bakery, chocolates and that is a range which we can help in terms of distribution, we can help in terms of building the brand and taking it to another level,” he added.The brand he said is one of the most iconic brands of the country and so would they would never imagine changing its name because the acquisition was done for the brand itself. Although, he added that they might change names of some other brands in their convenience stores.Talking about the deal size, he said: "This is an all cash deal, the transaction is around Rs 300 crore to buy out close to 100 percent of the equity."According to him this deal would result in multiple synergies - there are synergies in terms of our cold chain logistics business, and synergies in terms of our own brand distribution which can be sold through this network.