Not just festive demand, but winter demand too has been picking up, Anand Agarwal, Chief Financial Officer, V-Mart Retail, said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

“There is renewed activity in the market because of early winters which have set in, in the Hindi heartland and in the Northern parts of the country, which is also our core market. So we are seeing not just the festive rush, but also big rush for winter merchandise for which we are adequately stocked,” he said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

Agarwal said that all their stores, barring one or two, are currently operational. He further added that footfalls were good. On growth, he said, “We are trending roughly between 70 percent and 80 percent and plus which we would like to target for the festive period. Hopefully things are looking up and these numbers can only get better from here.”

On rentals, he said, “Most of the rental renegotiations have been closed. In fact in the last quarter we had recognized roughly 20 percent savings on a full year basis on the total rental cost and there are some more savings which will get accounted for in Q3.”

Agarwal added that they have opened seven stores in the last one month and they had closed four stores. However, he said that they are in a renewed investment phase and actively looking at new attractive locations. “The number of stores may not match up to the growth percentage of last year, but definitely from here onwards we are looking at adding more number of stores,” he said.

(Edited by : Santosh Nair)