The four year old owner of Indian online retailer Firstcry.com says it is now surpassed 100 bricks and mortar store openings – and has plans for 100 more.
Firtcry.com, which sells products for babies and children, is owned by Pune-based BrainBees Solutions which now describes itself as a hybrid retailer, selling on and offline. It now has more than 100 physical franchised stores trading in 82 cities throughout India.
It plans a network of more than 200 by the end of 2015, according to co-founder Supam Maheshwari in an interview with Techcircle.in.
“As of now, we are operating 105 physical stores that include six stores in Chennai, followed by Bangalore (five) and Pune (four). We add around eight stores per month and hopefully we will have around 100 more stores by the end of 2015,” Maheshwari said.
After such a fast-paced rollout, the company now sits a close second to the nation’s largest baby products chain, Manindra Group’s Mom & Me, based on store numbers.
FirstCry was co-founded by Maheshwari and Amitava Saha and early this year secured US$15 million in its third institutional investment round, which was led by Vertex Venture Holdings, a subsidiary of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.
Online, it boasts a catalogue of more than 70,000 products supplied by more than 400 brands from India and abroad, including Mattel, Fisher Price, Funskool, Disney, Hotwheels, Pampers, Barbie and Gerber.
