When will Delhi get its IKEA store? Global CEO Jesper Brodin reveals India expansion plan: Exclusive

Swedish multinational conglomerate IKEA’s India chapter began about five and a half years ago with its first store in Hyderabad. It was for the firm to prove itself that there was a market and there was an interest, Global CEO Jesper Brodin said.

In an exclusive interaction with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan, he said “the experience has been phenomenal for us, the interest is massive. After that we opened in Mumbai, Bengaluru and now Delhi is on the map. The long term plan for us is to establish IKEA in all big cities and then expand in an omni-channel context in India so we can reach as many people as possible.”

Brodin also said that a facility in Haryana’s Gurugram is already in the works, i.e. it is in the construction phase. The global CEO says this IKEA store will not only be a store but a shopping centre.

“It's quite complicated and a big project for us,” he said, adding that IKEA is not in India for a short term so it thinks long term.

Talking about the next leg of investments in India, Brodin said, within 2024, the firm should have a decision ready. “We have a couple of discussion points with officials and representatives of governments to make sure that we gain enough confidence to say we are ready to take the next step of investment.”

When asked about how large the presence is likely to be in India by 2030, he explained that on one hand, the firm needs to be a bit patient because building big IKEA stores takes time and building industry capabilities for the volumes that IKEA is supporting is basically a game of not only supporting IKEA, but making sure there are entrepreneurs, investors, and export support.“Because in the beginning, we need to build volumes, rely a bit on exports before it can benefit the domestic market.”

He said that normally it takes about a decade to get all these things in place. At the moment, the company is in a hurry to build volumes so that it can reach more people and also work the economy of scale to bring even more affordability to people.

A key highlight of IKEA has also been its small store strategy, which started as an experiment in 2018 as it wanted to bring stores closer to the city centres.

“The analysis wasn't that difficult to understand- a lot of people, limited capacity to move to the outskirts of the city. So, we wanted to bring the physical experience to people in a smaller format. We have done probably 40-50 of those, we might have closed some 10 of them. We learned that we need to be in a prime location, and we also need to build it in a certain flow so that it enables people to find what they need to find.”

He added that IKEA closed the Mumbai store that it closed recently wasn’t in an enough hotspot location. These smaller stores are smaller decisions for IKEA, because the investment is very small compared to Gurgaon but the global CEO is sure his company will continue to find ways in India to establish smaller stores.

Reflecting on scaling up production in the country, IKEA CEO explained that the market allows for much more than 10 stores. Even if the firm is much more ambitious than that, its global market share is normally short of 10%.

“We have never had the ambition to dominate any market. But what we can do is, we can stimulate a movement. And we have seen that in many countries that a lot of people benefit, including particularly value chains, both in production and services, and so on.”

He was eager to find ways for IKEA to meet more of the Indian consumers faster and that he says is a game of investing. "We have committed to ₹10,500 crore investment and we will over deliver…. online digital capabilities, and possibly experimenting with new ways of finding customers would be part of our moving a little bit faster in India.”