'Right Recipe Essential for a Successful Mall', Says Mirchandani, CEO of Brigade Retail

By Manu Sharma

High end brands like Hidesign, Jack n Jones, Zara, US Polo, Pepe, Apple, Gap, Vero Moda, and Sketchers bring in the footfalls and keep the malls buzzing with crowds. These brands also bring the much-needed moolah for the malls. With this strategy in mind, the Brigade Group, four years after enthralling Bangaloreans with its Orion Mall at Brigade Gateway has opened its second mall – Orion East – at Banaswadi Main Road, near ITC Factory.

Vishal Mirchandani, CEO Retail and Commercial, Brigade Group says,“Despite tough competition from other malls, high street retail and of course the e-commerce sites that have mushroomed lately, our success rate of our existing mall has been good. We have the right recipe essential for a successful mall. Our team has given great importance to factors like design and layout, the mall’s brand positioning, location and how well they cater to the needs of the target segment.”

“Also, like our existing Orion mall in Brigade Gateway, we shall evolve into family destinations rather than just remaining a shopping centres. Presently a 5 screens Cinepolis has come up that will help roll out award winning films and much more such entertainment will follow,” he said.

Already the mall claims of an 80 percent occupancy rate with most major brands like Apple, Hidesign, Body Shop, Mothercare setting up outlets in the mall. “Over the next 4-6 weeks shall see the whole mall fully operational with all other major brands coming in,” remarks Mirchandani.

Adding that e-commerce sites has been successful mainly for smaller brands. While brands like Sunglass Hut, Levis, Puma, Adidas, Pepe, Arrow, Soch, Global Desi among others have more sales in the brick and mortar stores and they have already taken space in our mall and will move in over the next few weeks.

With an investment of Rs 150 crore, the mall with an build-up area of 2.65 lakh sq.ft., brings 350 odd brands covering more than 70 premium and affordable lifestyle categories. Besides India’s leading multi-brand chains - Shoppers Stop and Westside will be the anchor stores. The mall is five storied high and has amble parking space of about 500 car parks. The management of the Brigade Group have projected a footfall of 15,000-25,000 on weekdays and 30,000-45,000 on weekends.

M.R. Jaishankar, CMD, Brigade Group says, “East of Bangalore is still under served and we have grabbed on the opportunity to open the mall here. Orion East will serve the strong premium catchment of Ulsoor, Frazer Town, Cox Town, Benson Town, HRBR Layout, Kammanahalli, Lingarajapuram, Rammurthy Nagar and other surrounding areas. Though our second mall we have continued to extend our relationship with our retail partners and hope to see optimized results similar to the earlier mall at Brigade Gateway.”

The Brigade Group plans to open two more such high-end malls in Bangalore in the future. “One of our properties on Old Madras Road is getting completed and will be opened shortly.”

Limited Opportunities for Tier II and Tier III Towns

In respect to the opening shopping malls in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns across  the country, “I forsee limited opportunities in such towns. It all depends on the people purchase power (PPP) in such towns. Towns like Surat, Chandigarh, Lucknow have high PPP index but I see potential only in the four metro cities down south. More ever, some high end brands may not find relevance in smaller cities.” concludes Jaishankar.