The UAE-based Lulu Group, which has announced investments of over Rs 19,000 crore in India for malls, hypermarkets, food processing centres and related businesses, plans to launch a dozen shopping malls in India in the next four years totalling to around 5 million sq ft of development, including in cities such as Gurugram and Noida.
“We are planning to set up 12 malls in the next three years. These would be in Calicut, Tirur, Perinthalmanna, Kottayam, Palakkad in Kerala and Noida, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Ahmedabad (in Uttar Pradesh), Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai,” Shibu Philips, director, shopping malls, Lulu Group India, told Moneycontrol.
The group has five operational malls in India at Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, Bengaluru and Lucknow, comprising about 8 million square feet of leasable area.
“At the end of three years, of the six malls currently leasable, the total leasable area is 3 million sq ft. In the future, when we open all our 12 malls—5 in Kerala (where) we will add another 2 million sq ft leasable area (all half a million sq ft projects), 2 million sq ft in Ahmedabad and a million in Chennai, half million in Hyderabad totalling to 4.5 million sq ft and if Pragyaraj also comes along we would have added a total of around 5 million sq ft retail development in the next four years,” he said.
Uttar Pradesh is an important market for the group.
“We are in the process of procuring land in Prayagraj and Varanasi, after which we may look at Kanpur. What format we consider for these markets (hypermarket or shopping malls model) will be a decision that the company board will take after considering the opportunities and potential in the market. This is still on the drawing board stage,” he said.
“We have already invested Rs 2,000 crore on the Lucknow property. We are also coming up with a food processing centre in the state for which Rs 500 crore has already been earmarked. Another Rs 2,000 crore are planned for expansion in Uttar Pradesh with respect to hypermarkets and malls,” he told Moneycontrol.
The retail property in Noida is still in the planning stage. Whether the company will launch this in Noida or Greater Noida will be dependent on the market opportunities available and the potential. “We are currently studying the market. If it is a full-fledged mall, it should be ready within three years and if it is a hypermarket, it should happen in a year’s time,” he said.
As for Gurugram, the company has taken up space in a mall for a hypermarket. “This is under construction. This should be operational in about a year-and-a-half,” he said.
The Lulu Group established its first mall in 2013 in Kochi, spread across 2 million sq ft. The company launched its second property in Thrissur, a 200,000 sq ft development, which has been operational for four years now. In October 2021, it opened a mall in Rajajinagar, Bengaluru, which is an 800,000 sq ft development.
“It is under the lease model and has been designed according to our standards. The mall is currently 95 percent leased and operational from October 2021,” he said.
The company launched another 2-million sq ft mall in Thiruvananthapuram, which is 90 percent leased out. In July this year, it launched a 2.2-million sq ft development in Lucknow, perhaps the largest mall in its portfolio.
The company operates on two models—malls spread a million sq ft or more across horizontal developments (hypermarkets) and mini shopping malls spread across half a million sq ft of development.
In Kerala, apart from the five retail centres in Kozhikode, Kottayam, Tirur, Perinthalmanna and Palakkad, the company plans to add a hypermarket in Kochi, and one each in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore and Chennai. “We are also scouting for land parcels in Chennai. We have already committed Rs 3,500 crore worth of investment for the city,” Philips said.
Bengaluru is another focus area. “We are planning four more hypermarkets in Bengaluru and one mini mall. The hypermarkets are already in the fit-out stage and will be operational in the next two quarters while for our other centres in the city, we are in an advanced stage of discussions,” he said.
On the company’s plans for Hyderabad, Philips said that the company has leased a pre-existing mall and is in the process of retrofitting the half a million sq ft space. “This will be operational by January 2023,” he said.
The global retail brand also has its eyes on land parcels in Ahmedabad in Gujarat for which it has announced an investment of Rs 2,000 crore. “We are already actively looking for land there and it is a matter of time before we start getting into the next stage of development,” he told Moneycontrol.
“We are also looking at entering Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh),” he added.
Elaborating on the food processing businesses, Philips said the company signed a memorandum of understanding with the Jammu and Kashmir government earlier this year. “J&K was an opportunity that came up and we have set up a food processing centre there and we are going to source the best possible fruits for consumers in the entire Middle East,” he said.
The company is also planning to set up a food processing centre in Noida at an investment of close to Rs 500 crore.
Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, the diversified Lulu group has an annual turnover of $8 billion. The group's business portfolio ranges from hypermarket operations, shopping mall development, manufacturing and trading of goods, food processing, wholesale distribution, hospitality assets, and real estate development. The group has operations spread over 22 countries.
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