Rajiv Suri, managing director and CEO of Indian department store chain Shoppers stop, said that the company will be debt free by the end of this year.

“We started the year with Rs 60 crore debt, we are currently at Rs 40 crore ... by end of this year, we will be debt-free,” said Suri.

Shoppers Stop posted their Q1 results on Friday. While the revenue declined by around 12 percent for the quarter, margins have expanded.

“From Q2 onwards, we are hoping that the topline will be making the main difference,” Suri hoped.

On margins, Suri said, “We are looking at a 100 basis points (bps) improvement over last year and we are going to try to get to that number. We had a stronger Q1 but there are still three quarters to go, so we want to be sure that we don’t give an over-optimistic guidance.”