Kishore Biyani resumes talks to buy or merge Aditya Birla Retail and this will be his fourth acquisition

Kishore Biyani’s Future Group has resumed talks to either buy or merge Aditya Birla Retail’s ‘More’ supermarket business and cement its position further in the retail sector.

The talks about the buyout or merger had begun a while ago but did not materialise. The discussions have begun again now.

If the deal sees light of the day, this will be Future Group's fourth acquisition of food and grocery chain in less than five years.

Previously, Future Group bought Big Apple in 2012, Nilgiri's in 2014 and merged Bharti Retail with itself in 2015.

Aditya Birla Retail is the fourth-largest supermarket chain in India after Future Group, Reliance Retail and D'Mart with 500 stores and revenues of Rs 2,948 crore during 2014-15.

Meanwhile, this acquisition or merger will also bring in more debt to Biyani.

ABRL had a net loss of Rs 571 crore in FY14-15 and total debt of Rs 5,232 crore as of March 31, 2015. Future has a debt burden of Rs 4,941 crore, and high interest outgo has been impacting profits.

"Traditionally, brick-and-mortar retailers have not been innovative enough to extend sales from their stores to online. Online can be a 'bolt on' to the offline stores. An offline store can cover only 2-3 km radius of catchment. With online, one store can cover up to 12 km radius," K Radhakrishnan, cofounder of GrocerMax, told ET.

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