IKEA Will open first store in India

For the first time in history, Indian living rooms could soon end up looking like other living rooms all over the world. Why? In 2017, the first IKEA store will open its doors in India.

 

A 400,000-square-foot store is planned in Hyderabad, a city in the southern state of Telangana. The grand opening follows three years of bureaucratic struggle and one year of construction but will result in the introduction of Swedish products and Swedish meatballs to about five or six million customers a year.

The opening of the store will be a big moment for both IKEA and India. The company has already had a presence in India for almost 30 years but not as a seller of products. Instead, IKEA has sourced products in India to supply their stores in other parts of the world.

Foreign single-brand stores were not allowed until very recently in India. It’s the new regulation that has finally allowed IKEA to enter the Indian market as a seller.

Aside from bureaucratic challenges, finding the right area to locate the store proved another hurdle. IKEA stores typically span about 350,000 feet, and such a space is hard to find in the easy-to-reach locations the company was looking for. But they finally found what they wanted in Hyderabad.

The store will offer job opportunities to about 2,500 people, and with this stronger presence in India, IKEA is planning to source even more products from India, helping the local economy even more.

After the Hyderabad store opens, IKEA aims to open at least 24 other stores in the coming ten years.