Sakina Fatima
Hyderabad: IKEA India is planning to enter the top Indian cities with an omnichannel approach. The Ingka Group company opened its first retail store in Hyderabad in August 2018, followed by online stores in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Pune last year as part of its multichannel approach.
During the financial year, 2020 over 2 million customers visited the company’s Hyderabad store and more than 25 million visited online stores in the city, Mumbai, and Pune.
Peter Betzel, CEO, and CSO, IKEA India, states, “We look forward to a strong and positive FY 2021 with our new IKEA store and also smaller formats coming up in Mumbai and continue establishing a strong omnichannel presence in our markets. 2021 is also the leap year of sustainability for IKEA and we will continue to enable and inspire more people to live a more sustainable life at home.”
He added, “New services like Click & Collect, remote planning, and home furnishing consultancy were launched in Hyderabad. We have been lowering our prices for many articles to become even more affordable for our consumers. As more people have been forced to stay home, the interest in home furnishing has increased and online shopping grew significantly.”
IKEA has over 50 suppliers with 45,000 direct employees and 4,00,000 people in the extended supply chain in India producing for IKEA stores worldwide.
Ingka Group achieved retail sales of EUR 35.2 billion for the financial year 2020, compared to EUR 36.7 billion for the financial year 2019, despite the economic and public health challenges posed by Covid-19. The company’s fiscal year is effective between 1 September 2019 and 31 August 2020.
Jesper Brodin, CEO, Ingka Group states, “Our strong performance over this unique time, shows the resilience of our business and the impressive leadership among colleagues across IKEA. During the last six months, we managed to quickly adapt to meet the new needs of our customers – and even if our values have been put to the test it’s clear that our purpose is what unites us.”
Over the year, the company has opened 26 new IKEA locations globally in cities such as Shanghai, Seoul, Moscow, and Tokyo, and developed a more seamless experience with new digital solutions.