IKEA heads to India

Swedish furniture retail giant IKEA has started hiring staff for its Indian operations and expects to open its first store here by 2017.

The company has drawn up a 10,500- crore investment plan to open 25 stores over a decade and has already acquired land in Hyderabad, where it is most likely to open its first store.

“We are preparing everything and in the next few months we will expand and we will have to do more employment,” – said Juvencio MaeztuI – CEO, IKEA India.

“You can have in between direct and indirect employment more than 2,000 people … May be 700 people would be employed in the store and then you would have double the amount of that when it comes to all services we do as home delivery, assembling and operation,” Maeztu explained.

Maeztu said that the first store in India would not be earlier than end of 2016 noting that it would take a little over a year to get the first store up and running.  The flagship IKEA store in India will be in Hyderabad as the company has already purchased the needed 12 acres of land.