Kalyan Jewellers, which went public with a Rs 1,200 cr IPO last week, said it will open a whopping 14 new showrooms on April 24.
The new stores being opened across India will increase the company’s store count to 151 from the present 137.
As a part of the expansion, the jewelry retailer from Thrissur will open its second Chennai showroom on North Usman Road. In Delhi, it will open a store in the western location of Dwarka, and another in Dilsukhnagar in Hyderabad.
The list of new top-tier showrooms also includes two scheduled to open in Matunga and Lower Parel Phoenix Palladium mall.
The other stores are being planned in Noida (UP), Nasik (Maharashtra), Jamnagar (Gujarat), Pathanamthitta (Kerala), Nagercoil, Madurai and Trichy (TN) and Khammam and Karimnagar (Telangana). Most of these will mid-sized showrooms.
“These new standalone showrooms will offer a safe and hygienic shopping environment, and will retail market specific hyper-local jewellery designs,” the company said.
Kalyan Jewellers is one of the handful of Kerala-based jewelry retailers that are expanding their footprint across India, after first having established a presence in the Middle East.
The Kalyan Group traces its roots to TS Kalyanarama Iyer, a priest who turned to business in 1909.
Iyer, originally from Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, established a textile mill in Thrissur city in the 1930s, followed by a textile shop which is today known as Kalyan Silks.
The group was divided into five in 1991 among TS Kalyanarama Iyer’s grandsons, one of whom — TS Kalyanaraman — started Kalyan Jewellers two years later.
“Kalyan Jewellers has a sizable presence across 21 states, and we are positive that we will be able to capitalize on the foundations that we have laid, and leverage our already established processes, purchase ecosystem system and market understanding to aid growth momentum,” said TS Kalyanaraman on the big bang expansion plan.
Kalyan Jewellers currently has 107 showrooms in India and 30 in the Middle East.
Thanks to the expansion, the company is expected to increase its working capital — the money used to run the day-to-day operations — by Rs 500 cr in the first quarter that starts in April, it added.
Kalyan Jewellers has traded only for one day on the Indian bourses, on Friday, when it ended the day down 16% from its IPO price at around Rs 74.