xploryze 2.0 case

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT RAIPUR 1

AMARA BAZAAR’S FORAY INTO RAIPUR

Raipur city is the capital of the state of Chattisgarh. As per 2011 census, Raipur

Municipal Corporation has a population of 10, 10,087 and it sprawls over an area of 226 sq

km. The population includes people from diverse backgrounds and origins including ethnic

Chattisgarhis, North Indians, South Indians and few North-east Indians also. The city is the

hub of continuing trade and commercial activities with a host of core industries settled

around it. It has also emerged as the largest growing urban settlements in Chattisgarh.

In the recent past, government of Chattisgarh decided to build the city of Naya

Raipur which is the new capital city of the state. It is situated at a distance of around 15 km

from the current city and is spread over an area of 80 sq km. It will be India’s fourth planned

capital city after Chandigarh, Gandhinagar and Bhubneshwar. In Naya Raipur, it is proposed

to use 30% of the land for residential and economical purposes and 23% of the land for

educational institutions, government offices and public auditoriums. Though presently this

place serves as the administrative centre of the state government and is under

development, it is expected to house around 4, 50,000 people in ten years time.

Amara Bazaar is head quartered in Kolkata and started its business by opening its

first retail store in Kolkata 12 years ago. Over the time it tasted success and expanded into

North eastern states where they have total of 12 stores. At present, apart from these stores

they have another three stores in West Bengal, three stores in Jharkhand and another two

in Orissa. Inspired by the new found commercial and infrastructural growth in Raipur, Amara

Bazaar is planning to open a new retail store in Raipur.

This case is written by Anubhav Sood, PGP student of IIM Raipur. It is solely for the discussion purpose though some inspiration may be drawn from some real life situations but it is not to show the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of any individual or organization.

Copyright © Indian Institute of Management Raipur


Presently Raipur city has four malls located at different locations throughout the

city. Out of these four malls, three already house one or the other type of retail store which

include Big Bazaar & Easy day. The details of these stores as given in table 1 and exhibit 1

shows the location of these malls in the city.

Amongst these three retail stores, presently the Big Bazaar store located at City

Centre mall sees the highest footfalls. It is located at the central location in Raipur city. This

mall also has stores like Central, Reliance trends, Reliance footprints and Cinemax Multiplex.

This is the biggest of the three stores in terms of area and also generates the

highest sales in Raipur. The store is spread on a single floor over 38000 square feet. It keeps

more than 50000 SKUs of items ranging across electronics, apparels, shoes, accessories,

watches, FMCG items, kitchen and dining, home and living, bed and bath. The store also

houses a Food Bazaar and a bakery shop. It has a workforce of around 150 employees. The

store works in two shifts, first from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm and the second from 1:30 pm to

10:30 pm. It has a total of 15 billing counters which include 3 pocket billing counters. Three

cashiers report in the morning shift and ten in the evening. Out of the total staff 25 people

are cross trained to handle different activities so as to meet any contingencies. Table 2 and

table 3 shows the number of billings done on a particular day for afternoon and evening

time which can be considered as daily averages at these times.

Amara Bazaar has option to take up the space in two of the malls in the city. One

mall is 5 year old R K Mall and the other is the new upcoming mall named Mosaic in the

Naya Raipur city. Some details related to these malls can be seen in Table 1 and location of

these malls is also shown in the Exhibit 1.

R K Mall is located towards the west end of the city and is close to the cities of Durg

and Bhilai which are two major industrial hubs around Raipur with a big chunk of middle

class population. This mall is around 20 kms from these two cities. This mall already houses

a multiplex named Glitz and many branded stores.


The other mall, Mosaic, is under construction in the Naya Raipur city. The mall is

part of an urban housing and commercial development plan. Along with the construction of

the mall, some residential and commercial complexes are also under construction. Some of

these buildings will be completed along with the mall within one year but the whole project

is expected to be complete in 5 to 7 years. During this time many other projects will also be

coming up in the Naya Raipur city.

Mr. Alok Banerjee, CEO of Amara Bazaar has chosen Mr. Rakesh Ranjan, Head-

Retail Strategy, for setting up the store in Raipur. Since the city has a huge potential Mr.

Banerjee doesn’t want to leave any stones unturned in setting up the store. He also knows

that the consumer behaviour of people in different cities is different therefore partnering

with local small players to understand the psyche of the population will be important.

Mr. Ranjan will have to study the working of other stores like Big Bazaar, Easy Day

etc closely and he will then have to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of the current

Retail store management model in Raipur.

All the hypermarket stores in the city open at around 11:30 in the morning and

close by 9:00 pm. Amara Bazaar is planning to remain open till midnight. Mr. Ranjan is also

thinking about running two shifts i.e. from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and the other from 4:00pm

to 12:00 pm.

Most of the hypermarkets use the ‘multiple line multiple server’ model for billing.

These stores have 10-15 billing counters (may vary as per store size and layout- usually a

store with area of 30000 – 40000 sq feet will have such number of counters) which are

opened depending upon the number of customers lined up for billing. For instance in the

weekdays during the afternoon the store could be working with only one billing counter

open, on the other hand, during the weekends in the evening hours when people are free

and come in huge numbers to shop the store has to open all the billing counters.


Amara Bazaar is looking for various other queuing options so as to minimize

customer waiting time and also optimize the use of floor space at the store. These models

could be single line multiple server, single line single server and others.

Mr. Rakesh Ranjan is assessing the situation well and with his experience in the

retail industry for the last 15 years he knows that the whole idea of setting up this store

would have to be first strategized on paper and only then the execution could begin. While

setting up the earlier retail stores in Dhanbad, Gangtok and Ranchi he had understood that

there could not be a standard model and hence, changing the operations of the store as per

the norms of city is best to have a more customer centric approach. In line with this thought

he is also planning to suggest the management a more ‘national’ name. Amara Bazaar has

been a very regional name and national expansion had always found some amount of

difficulty for the local customers to relate themselves with this store.

One morning in his office at Park Street, Kolkata, Mr. Ranjan called his operations

and marketing team and decided to plan out a strategy for the store to be opened in Raipur.

He was very clear in that the team was to work on only the strategies discussed during that

meeting. The teams were to work in tandem with each other to find out the best strategies.

Amara Bazaar was not satisfied with the level of operational efficiency it was experiencing at

its other stores. They were hoping to replicate learnings from this store to their other stores

also. The high operational efficiency in this store could be modelled elsewhere as many

stores of Amara Bazaar were experiencing low operational efficiency. Mr. Ranjan made the

team understand how this project would not only give them professional highs but also

expand their knowledge of some of the finest tools used in operations management. He

wants his team to work out the following issues:

1) Location of the store- Mr. Ranjan asked his team to refer the map of Raipur and

suggest the location out of the two options they had. They were to basically focus on

maximum footfall and also a very high percentage of the Target group

2) Decide on the format of the store- Supermarket/Hypermarket/Supercentre.


3) Based on the format of the store the marketing team was to suggest the

Merchandising Strategy. The team was to suggest whether in the city of Raipur a

store with high variety and fewer assortments would be advisable or one with high

assortment and less variety would succeed.

4) Depending upon the merchandising and type of the store format what should be the

layout of the store and placing of various items and billing counters.

5) Develop a shift plan with the manpower requirement.

6) Compare the various queuing models and suggest the best which would save

customers from waiting extra and also bring in efficient usage of manpower for

Amara Bazaar.


S. No. Mall Name Location Retail Store Owned By

Other stores (not

exhaustive list)

Remark

1 City Mall 36 Devendra Nagar Big Bazaar Future Group Globus, Lotus, Inox

2 Magneto Mall

Mahaveer Nagar Easyday Bharti-Walmart

Westside, PVR

3 City centre Mall

Shankar Nagar Big Bazaar Future Group

Central, Reliance trends,

Cinemax

4 R. K. Mall Amnaka crossing Glitz Cinema, No Hypermarket- Space available 30000 sqft to 50000 sq feet

5 Mosaic Mall Naya Raipur

Proposed- Fun republic,

pantaloons

Mall is under construction- will be up by this year- space available 40000 sq feet to 60000 sq feet

TABLE 1: Details of Malls and Hypermarkets in Raipur

TABLE 2: Observations at Big Bazaar (City Centre Mall) during day time

Counter No. Status Start

time End time

Total no.

served

1 Closed

2 Closed

3 Open 11:45 13:20 26

4 Closed

5 Closed

6 Open 11:45 13:20 29

7 Closed

8 Closed

9 Closed

10 Closed

11 Closed

12 Closed


TABLE 3: Observations at Big Bazaar (City Centre Mall) during evening time

Counter No. Status Start

time End time

Total no.

served

1 Closed

2 Open 18:55 20:17 14

3 Open 18:55 20:17 20

4 Closed

5 Open 18:55 20:17 25

6 Closed

7 Open 19:16 20:35 22

8 Closed

9 Open 19:16 20:35 17

10 Open 19:16 20:35 29

11 Open 19:16 20:35 24

12 Open 19:16 20:35 23


EXHIBIT 1: Raipur city map showing location of various malls. The colours represent population density/ sq km


GUIDELINES

1. Deadline for submission of case analysis is 2359 hours on 12th Feb’13.

2. Reasonable assumptions can be taken and should be mentioned.

3. The analysis should be in the form of a power-point presentation not exceeding 15

slides excluding the ‘Cover’ slide & ‘Thank you’ slide.

4. The cover slide must contain your team name; name, email ID & contact no. of both

the participants.

5. The parameters on which teams would be judged would include the depth of their

analysis, the flow of the analysis, extent of coverage of the topics, clarity and

innovation in ideas and the way of presentation.

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In case of any clarifications you can write to [email protected] or contact Anubhav Sood at 9200007747

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