IKEA store attracts 40,000 customers on first day
Hyderabad, Aug 10 : About 40,000 people visited IKEA's first India store on the opening day here, a company spokesperson told IANS.
The world's leading Swedish home furnishings retailer received huge response from customers on Thursday. The spokesperson, however, declined to share the numbers relating to the business transacted on the first day.
However, the response was in line with the expectations. Store manager John Achillea had stated that they were expecting 40,000 to 45,000 people.
With huge crowd thronging the store in the evening, the IKEA staff found it a bit challenging to regulate the entry. There were also few tense moments when some people broke queue to force their entry.
Drawn by the aggressive marketing campaign including advertisements with the prices of affordable products, a large number of visitors from several parts of the city thronged the store.
Many were curious to see the offering from an international brand. They were seen checking the price tag and feeling the products like beds, mattresses and chairs.
As the sprawling store has come up in the heart of HITEC City, majority of the customers were techies from information technology companies. There were many expatriates and the Indians who earlier lived abroad and knew the brand.
Several visitors were seen in the 1,000-seater restaurant, which is the biggest for IKEA in its global network. The 400,000 sq.ft store offers 7,500 products including 1,000 products priced below Rs 200.
The first India store of IKEA was opened with an investment of Rs.1,000 crore, five years after the world's largest single brand retailer received government approval in 2013 to invest Rs 10,500 crore to open 25 stores in India by 2025.
The company now revised the number of stores to 40 across all formats.
IKEA's next store will open in Navi Mumbai in next summer, followed by Bengaluru and Delhi. In the next phase, IKEA would cover Ahmedabad, Surat, Pune, Chennai and Kolkatta.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
