The Aditya Birla Group runs its retail business under the brand-name ‘more’. Hypermarkets will be operational from 2013 in the metros like Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, while the supermarkets will be coming up in tier-II cities.
The Future group currently owns 152 Big Bazaar stores in the country and plans to have at least 30 more outlets by mid-year. Reliance Trends plans to increase its number of stores to 150 from the present 35 early this year. It has a major presence in Chennai and Tirupur.
Railways
“There is a big change in the Railway sector and today the platforms in stations are much better maintained. We would like to enter this sector,” said Christie Cherian, Managing Director, Red Sky Property Services, who is managing the India operations. All Services Global and BVG are two big players in the railways.
In the present scenario, security services are also fast catching up as the salaries have gone up three times by 37% last year. It has moved away from the FM preview and we are sub-contracting security for our facilities.
Residential segment
“The residential segment, which is more than 100 million sqft in South India alone, is big business. Anything above 200 apartment blocks fall in this category,” said Raghunandana. “This is one of the fast growing sectors for facility services in South India.”
As Bharathi puts it, the “homecare” segment has a huge potential. “In fact, with people not having much time to maintain homes, the service industry has stepped in. This segment also acts as a great support to the burgeoning overhead costs incurred by the service providers.”
Tandem Allied Services based out of Bangalore and in operation for about 13 years, has 1000 workers and is servicing about 4.5 million sqft.
“We would like to sustain in the growing residential, commercial and techparks segments,” said Arunkumar, Managing Director, Tandem Allied Services.
Tenon, the Rs2189.40 million company, is planning to expand into residential property management, manufacturing facilities, business parks, hospitals, hotels, malls / multiplexes, educational institutions and Retail outlets apart from the regular BFSI & IT/ITES sectors where they have a strong presence.
Hospitality
“Hospitality is a huge market. A lot of hotels have outsourced facility management services like security, kitchen stewarding and cleaning,” asserts Dhruv Sawhney, Proprietor of Bangalore-based Wall2Wall Property Services. “Industries form another huge segment and we are doing a few of them.” In operation for the last two years, Wall2Wall has some of the prestigious accounts like Fortis Bangalore, Lemontree, software companies and a mall in Whitefield.
We are doing Fortis hospital, Lemontree, software companies and a few reputed malls. We also provide pantry services besides facility management.
“Previously we were donig common area cleaning but now there is a major shift. Hotels are looking at outsourcing even for room servicing,” added Prabhu.
Manufacturing segment
Over the last two decades, Chennai and Bangalore have been growing rapidly in manufacturing. In the last four years, manufacturing growth, especially automobile, has surpassed the IT sector in South India.
The service industry potential is huge. What we are doing today is at the tip of an iceberg. That is because a lot of industries are still engaging the unorganised players and we being listed in the London Stock Exchange, we are to follow certain rules and regulations and are highly organised. If today I have a monthly billing of `2 crores, few months down the line I expect to do 10 times more.
Educational institutions
Sinar Jernih has mainly been into the hospitality sector. However, it is now planning to grow in the healthcare and airports as well. “We have found a new niche market segment that we wish to pursue that is education institutions. Universities, schools, hostels are also part of the fast growing market for facilities services,” said JS Shekar, Executive Director, Sinar Jernih India Pvt Ltd. “In fact, it is said that today schools and colleges are not selling seats based on their syllabus but on their hostel cafeteria quality. Educational cleaning is different from other cleaning services. There is a need for processes when it comes to cleaning a play school,” explained Shekar.
In fact, it is said that today schools and colleges are not selling seats based on their syllabus but on their cafeteria quality of the hostels. Educational institution cleaning is different from other cleaning services and this segment is fast growing.
“The number of International schools, colleges and institutes coming up has huge potential for the service market and we are planning to enter this segment,” added Bharathi.
