after 12 long years of planning and six year after it made an announcement ikea is finally opening its first store in india tomorrow the worlds largest furniture retailer is all set to open its hyderabad store on august 9 the first of 25 it plans to open in india by 2025the first ikea store is a 13acre complex in hitec city on the outskirts of hyderabad the showroom will display some 7500 products and nearly 1000 of which would sell for for less than rs 200 a piece ikea expects six million customers in a yearikea had earlier said that it decided to move the date to august 9 from july 19 as it needed some more time to live up to its expected quality commitments towards customers and coworkers advt the ikea teams had visited over 1000 homes in india with varied income levels and lifestyles to understand their needs and dreams before finalising around 7500 varieties of home furnishing items to be made available at its india storesikea expects its restaurant business to drive higher footfalls at its stores in india a sharp contrast to other markets where customers flock in to buy its popular readytoassemble productsthe hyderabad store will have a 1000seater restaurant ikeas biggest globally half of its restaurant menu will consist of vegetarian options including idli and sambar samosa and vegetable biryani sourced from about 25 vendors mainly womenled social enterprises chicken will replace ikeas trademark beef and pork meatballs in deference to indian cultural preferences we internally call our restaurant or food business the best sofaseller as it takes time to buy furniture so we need food for people to stay in india for every customer on the cash counter we will have one paying at the restaurant too thats nearly 50 of the customers as indians love food patrick antoni deputy country manager at ikea india told et in junethe global furniture giant also plans to start ecommerce operations from mumbai next year it plans to offer online sales in cities where it can support them with fulfilment delivery and assembling services advt we would like to start online sales to begin with from mumbai and we are quite sure that in a couple of years we will be available for online shopping in a lot of cities chief executive peter betzel said in hyderabad last monthikea sees potential to set up large or small format stores in at least 49 indian cities with a population of more than a million each over the years after hyderabad we will open stores in mumbai bengaluru delhi ahmedabad pune chennai and others we are curious to try multichannel sales large format small format with store without store online betzel said et online published on aug 8 2018 at 0130 pm ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click