Ajay Kapoor Says “Stay True to What Your Brand Stands For”

With the all-new FabIndia Experience Centers, FabIndia plans to bring the experience of health, wellness, and ethnicity all under the same roof.

Recently, FabIndia opened its third “Experience centers” in Delhi, making the number to seven in 2018-19. It aims to open 13-14 “Experience Centres” in 2019.

In conversation with Franchise India, Ajay Kapoor, President-Retail, FabIndia, talks about the specialty of developing “Experience Centers” apart from the retail model.

Ajay says, “Fabindia's Experience Centers are developed to provide an alternative shopping experience by shifting from transactional exchanges to a more experiential and interactive experience by providing customers a touch-and-feel experience of products.”

Foraying Into Wellness

Ajay says, “Wellness was always a part of FabIndia for more than three years now. With the Experience Centres, offering the product range has grown much wider, and apart from the products we were selling earlier, we are also talking about getting into detox segment, with the help of nutritionists. So, that’s what the wellness concept is all about: to get the customers into the FabIndia way of life.

“We have observed that the customer is much more aware today and is inclined towards the wellness, healthy and toxin- free style of living. Through FabIndia Experience Centres, we have moved away from retail and are going towards building an experience for the customer, where they can relate with the brand in every possible way.

“Through the FabIndia cafés, we are aligning our products and customers with the wellness concept, where the samosas are not fried but baked, where you get chapattis not made of only one kind of grain but with multigrain. We have also tied up with Organic India, where we sell their wellness products on our stores. And, that is how we are promoting the wellness concept in FabIndia.”

The Legacy Brand

FabIndia has been in India for more than 50 years and now it has become a global brand, with stores across India as well as overseas.

Ajay says, “We have stores in places like Port Blair and Srinagar, where the brand has done better than forecasted and is still going strong. We are planning to open ten more Experience Centers including one each in Bombay, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Pune and other tier-II and tier-III cities through the franchise model.

“To become a successful brand, I believe one has to stick to the roots and stay true to what the brand stands for. Of course, one can experiment within a reasonable limit; ultimately, people know you for something and the true essence should not go missing while experimenting.”