Vishal Mega Mart

“Well, our goal is to achieve double-digit for the full year. So, you're absolutely right. Q3 will have to be higher than 10%, as you rightly said, for the first nine months to look like double-digit growth.”

“Thirdly, we have commissioned a fully automated, very large warehouse in North India. We have plans to commission such warehouses in East India next, after that in South India, and the last in the Western part of the country.”

“So, as I had mentioned earlier also, once the opportunity for the 18,000 or the large format stores starts diminishing in a state, only then will we go and open the small format stores.”

“If I were to look at the national opportunity, there would be an opportunity to open upwards of 3,000 such stores across the entire country in all the states.”

“It's very early days, but our conversion of footfall into the store into purchase is north of 50%.”

“So, since the festivals fell in the third quarter, we are going to see a significantly higher bias towards apparel in quarter 3 vis-a-vis quarter 2.”

“Just to remind ourselves we have a clearly identified universe of 2,000 large format stores which we can open. And at this stage, we are at 850 odd.”

“I'm happy to report that we've had a strong start to the festivals.”

“On the macro front, demand conditions remained steady, despite renewed inflationary pressure across key raw material categories and a somewhat uneven monsoon.”

“We are not seeing any moderation in terms of consumer and customer demand.”

“So, I would say that we've not quite seen any demand challenge anywhere. It's been quite even across the country.”

“For example, in this quarter, quarter 2, almost all our growth has come through market share gain and not through our existing customers buying more.”

“Operating EBITDA for Q2 '27 was INR262 crores, which was a growth of 3.7% over last year and a margin of 7.7% versus 8.5% in last year.”

“Profit after tax, adjusted for ESOP charges, was INR172 crores, which is a 6.4% growth over last year and PAT margin of 5.1% versus 5.4% last year, impacted again by operating deleverage due to the shift in festivals.”

“Operating EBITDA for the first half was INR649 crores, which is a growth of 12.5% over last year and a margin of 9.1% versus 9.4% for last year.”

“Percy, we have accounted for all that, and we've been able to maintain our gross margins on account of cost reengineering across the board. And I must say that all the vendors are charging higher prices now. So, therefore, we do not see any material impact further going into quarter 3 and quarter 4 of the year.”

“The increase in employee cost versus last quarter is on account of two things. One is the incremental ESOP cost, and second is the number of new stores that we have opened in the last two quarters.”

“Videesha, last year, by end of September, the inventory build-up has already happened. But this year, there is three weeks shift in festival, so obviously that build-up has happened later.”

“In quarter 2, we launched the first pilot store of Belong & Co., our new apparel format, catering to young, affluent urban consumers with a very distinct brand proposition, offering effortless fashion.”

“Our future plans will depend entirely upon the experience that we have in a few stores that we will open this year for Belong & Co.”

“So, it's more urban, more metro-centric, more affluent customers, higher price points, but significantly high on fashionability compared to even the international standards.”

“Of course, depending on the response and our learnings, we would need further capacity expansion there.”

“Firstly, and upfront, I must state that our board is looking at the cash reserves that we have on our balance sheet to ensure that what is the best way to deal with that, while ensuring that the business is never starved of cash for growth or exploring capability and capacity improvement.”

“Our same-store sales growth stood at 5.4%. The festivals this year have shifted from quarter 2 to quarter 3. This has had an impact of 3% to 4% on our same-store sales growth. Adjusting for that, our same-store sales growth in Q2 has been around 9%.”

“what's happened this year, unlike last year, is that the key festivals, which is Durga Puja, Dussehra, and Navratras, fell this year in October.”

“I must confess that what has been somewhat uneven is the rainfall across the different states in India.”

“But it is not my submission that there is no price elasticity of demand. Inevitably, there is price elasticity of demand, and it is also seen in our numbers for even this quarter.”

“But that's a very temporary one or two-day phenomenon. But the fundamental demand is quite consistent across the country.”

“Starting with quarter 2 '27 highlights, we delivered another strong quarter with revenue from operations growing by 14% to INR3,399 crores.”

“Revenue from operations grew by 16.4% to INR7,126 crores. Same-store sales growth stood at 7.7%.”

“Profit after tax, adjusted for ESOP charges, grew by 15.8% to INR437 crores, a margin of 6.1%”

“And we now have presence in 582 cities across the country.”

“Our trading area stood at 1.41 crores square feet. Our private brands contributed 74% to revenue in first half of '27.”