INTERVIEW: Chumbak to open more than 50 stores in the next 2-3 years

• Chumbak to open over 50 retail stores in various cities of India in the next 2-3 years.
• As the company will be opening new stores, it will be hiring more people across the country.
• Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the home-grown brand had to close down around 17 of its offline physical stores located at multiple locations in India.

Chumbak, which is a Gurgaon-based home and lifestyle brand, is planning to expand its offline footprint by opening over 50 new stores in various cities of India. The company is looking forward to opening stores in tier 2 cities and states like Jaipur, Tamil Nadu, and Northeastern states.

“As things are now getting back to normal, we will also resume our expansion, maybe, in the next quarter or by this financial year, probably by re-expanding our retail stores. We need to go to at least 100 plus stores in the next 2-3 years,” told Vasant Nangia, chief executive officer at Chumbak to Business Insider in an interview.

As the company will be opening new stores, it will be hiring more people across the country. “As we open more stores, we will be needing more people as store managers, merchandising staff, product staff and many more. And we will also be filing the small gap that we are left within the digital side as well,” Nangia highlighted.

Nangia further told Business Insider that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the home-grown brand had to close down around 17 of its offline physical stores located at multiple locations in India. The number of retail stores came down from 70 to 53, which were majorly located in tier 1 cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

“We went back to the landlords (during COVID-19 lockdown) and had discussions with them. We asked them how do we bear the burden of closure and low traffic. Some landlords of large stores as well were not so understanding, so we were unfortunately forced to close because it wasn’t viable,” Nangia added.

However, in the online segment, the company claims that it grew exponentially throughout the pandemic because most of its target audience is online. “For us, it was a big surprise and the only good thing, which kept us going was that the online sales really picked up during the pandemic,” he said further.

Nangia also told Business Insider that in the last two years the company has also expanded its product categories by entering the beauty and home-decor space as well. “In the last two years, we have introduced a lot of new product categories to complete our offering and now we believe that it is fully complete in terms of categories,” he said.

Other than that, the company will soon be raising another round of funding as part of its expansion plans, however, Nangia did not disclose the funding amount as the company is still in talks with investors. “We are looking for funds for expansion and our people have just started going out in the market to talk to investors regarding funding in the next couple of months maybe.”

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