Dabur India to invest Rs 120 crore in lifestyle retail

New Delhi: Indian FMCG player Dabur India, is planning a big ticket investment in its beauty and lifestyle retail business, H&B Stores. The amount slated to be invested will be of the order of Rs 120 crore over the next three years with the company planning to open about 100 H&B stores by 2010 according to Dabur India vice chairman Amit Burman.

According to  Burman, H&B Stores, which will distribute other brands apart from Dabur's,  would have its own back-end supply chain and the company has started recruiting personnel to man the stores that are slated to open from mid-January 2008.

Earlier reports have indicated that Dabur India's retail operations would include beauty and health services in a big way and these would compete against the services offered by Marico's Kaya Skin Clinics. Unlike Marico's Kaya Skin Clinics Dabur plans to price its services on the affordability plank as Dabur's products are positioned on the value for money platform.

Dabur's retail stores would also offer pharmacy services based on its ayurvedic portfolio of products and the company plans to differentiate its H&B stores by offering services to go with it. Hence the company is hiring specialists to deliver these services.

The company plans to launch between four and six stores this year in Delhi and the NCR region and would begin operations in the North before having a pan-India presence. 40 stores are expected to open in 2008-09.