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Bookcases and biryani collide as Ikea tackles India
HYDERABAD, India, Aug 9, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Curious customers lay on beds and
nestled into armchairs Thursday as Ikea opened its first Indian outlet,
hoping to wow a burgeoning middle class with offerings tweaked to local
tastes, including its famous meatballs.
Opened with a military band, the store in the southern city of Hyderabad is
the first of 25 outlets the Swedish furniture giant hopes to open by 2025
across the country of 1.25 billion people.
Analysts say, however, that the firm’s concept of affordable, self-assembly
furniture may have trouble translating to a market where do-it-yourself
homemaking is an alien idea and spending levels are low.
Around 200 people queued up in the underground car park before the opening,
and were greeted inside by hundreds of blue-and-yellow clad employees on the
stairs waving Swedish and Indian flags.
“I’ve come all the way from Bangalore (575 kilometres, 360 miles away). I
am excited to see what’s there,” garment factory employee Krishna Mohan
Dixit, 39, who began lining up 90 minutes before the opening, told AFP.
“We are looking forward to it. Actually it’s my wife who got me here. Her
sister sends a lot of Ikea stuff from Dubai. So here we are,” said IT manager
Nasrullah Khan, 34, another early bird.
Patrik Antoni, deputy retail manager for Ikea India, told AFP that he had
tears in his eyes when the first customers arrived. “It is overwhelming, a
dream come true,” he said.
The changes compared with Ikea elsewhere start with the restaurant —
“Smaklig Maltid — Enjoy your Meal in Swedish” is written on the wall — with
space for 1,000 people, the firm’s biggest.
For religious reasons, the meatballs are not beef or pork but chicken or
vegetarian instead, while Indians’ beloved biryani dish was on offer for 99
rupees ($1.44).
On Thursday, the eatery was crowded, with people happy to queue up with
their trays.
Bhaskar Reddy, 35, who runs a stockbroking company in Hyderabad and who
lived in Sweden for about two years, opted to compare the food first.
“I quite like the meatballs. It’s chicken and not beef but nice they have
tweaked the food for our sensibilities,” Bhaskar told AFP.
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– Loveseats and tawas –
Alongside standard Ikea furniture like Billy bookshelves and Klippan
“loveseats”, the chain has “locally relevant products” like masala boxes,
Indian frying pans called tawas, rice cake makers and mattresses with a
coconut-fibre centre.
There are also more than 1,000 products under 200 rupees to satisfy
consumers whom John Achillea, store manager, said have “big aspirations for
their homes and small wallets”. A six-piece bowl set with cutlery for kids
costs 131 rupees, for example.
The interior has a noticeable local feel too, with Indian-design bedspreads
and framed photos of the Taj Mahal and other Indian monuments — alongside
Klimt’s painting “The Kiss” recalling faraway Europe.
“We decided not to copy and paste,” Juvencio Maeztu, Ikea’s finance chief,
told AFP. “We met and interacted with 1,000 Indian families to understand
what were their dreams, their frustrations and what they want.”
On Thursday, by midday the outlet was filled with people with more pouring
in all the time, mostly just checking things out but with a few making their
first purchases.
It was the living room section that attracted most attention with curious
customers testing the softness of the sofas and stretching out on the king-
sized beds.
– ‘A flop, I tell you’ –
To overcome Indians’ aversion to assembling their furniture, with people
used to small, family-owned firms providing a bespoke service, Ikea teamed up
with UrbanClap, an online platform connecting handymen with consumers.
After Hyderabad, Ikea plans to open outlets in the financial capital Mumbai
next year, followed by Bangalore and New Delhi as it seeks to grab a share of
India’s estimated $40-billion home goods market.
But Satish Meena from Forrester Research said the firm will also have to
adapt its offerings to the “extremely diverse” Indian market.
“No two states or cities have the same furniture demand and behaviour,
lifestyle and culture vary from one region to another. Hence, Ikea will have
to address space, pricing and design issues and pick products accordingly,”
Meena said.
Locals in Hyderabad not at Ikea were sceptical.
“I will wait and watch,” Mohammad Noor, a businessman, told AFP. “I have
never been to an Ikea store before. But I believe there it’s all compressed
wood. Indian wood is much better.”
And Siddharth, who is in charge of a Hyderabad furniture shop and goes by
one name, said Ikea might attract hard-up students but in general people
would stick with “quality”.
“It will be a flop, I tell you,” he told AFP. “The regular furniture
consumer will stick with the more solid wood available in the Indian
market… I don’t think it will give us much competition.”
BSS/AFP/HR/1410