Ikea, the world’s largest furniture retailer, will open its first store in India at Hyderabad in the later half of 2017, even as it scouts for more sites in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

The company, which received government approval in 2013 for its Rs 10,500 crore proposal to open retail stores under 100% FDI, plans to open 25 stores by 2025 in 9 Indian cities.  In July last year, the company had announced purchase of 13 acre land close to the IT hub in Hyderabad’s HITEC city.

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“Digging for construction of our first store in India started this week,” Mikael Palmquist, IKEA Asia Pacific Retail President said.

Palmquist said IKEA expects its stores in the country to be among “the most visited stores in the world” and hence the company has prepared for it by planning bigger restaurants and more seating capacity to suit high visitation stores.

IKEA’s first store in Hyderabad will be a massive 4 lakh square feet in size and will include all features of a global IKEA store, including restaurant and play and development area, he said.

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The company said that it will showcase its products from its global portfolio in India based on the taste and requirements of the regions where its stores are located. On the pace of expansion in India, Palmquist said, compared to China where it has been there for 15 years and opening at a rate of 3 stores a year only now, here IKEA will be looking at a much faster growth.

Elaborating on IKEA’s expansion plans in India, he said: “After Hyderabad, in the first phase of growth, we plan to open stores in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. We are searching for land in these cities. We want to open more than one stores in locations where our stores come up.”

“In India I want us to be there earlier, within five years, we should have capability to open three stores a year to hit the 25 (stores),” he added. The company said it needs some time “to build a sustainable and long-term sourcing solutions” to source raw material, find local entrepreneurs and to create industrial set ups.

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