Domino's opens 300th store in India with appetite for more

New Delhi, March 11 (IANS) Domino's, the $5.5 billion Michigan-based pizza delivery and Italian fast food giant, has opened its 300th store in India, and its 9,000th worldwide, with an appetite for more outlets in the country in the coming months.

"We plan to carry out similar aggressive marketing in future as well. This store makes us the largest food chain brand in India," said Ajay Kaul, chief executive of Jubilant FoodWorks, the master franchisee of Domino's pizza chain in India.

"Domino's has entered 25 cities in India, with some stores even in cities like Gangtok and Siliguri. We have registered a compounded annual growth of 42 percent in the past five years," Kaul told IANS at the new store at Pitampura in the capital's west district.

The event saw the global chief executive of Domino's Patrick Doyle flying in from their headquarters at Michigan, joined by Jubilant's chairman Shyam S. Bhartia and co-chairman Hari S. Bhartia.

"For half a century, Domino's has been able to grow and thrive thanks to the eforts of franchisees and team members. Our teams in India and Louisiana are two of the largest and best franchisees," Doyle said.

"We are now looking forward to one of our cherished goals -- we want to clip the ribbon on our 10,000th store within the first half of this decade. We want to make that happen and surely," Doyle added.

To mark the event, Domino's also distributed 4,500 vouchers to Concern India, a non-government organisation, to feed 4,500 underprivileged children and similar number of pizzas will be given away in New Orleans.

Even though neither Domino's nor Jubilant were willing to share specific numbers, the Indian franchisee hopes to use a significant portion of their recent initial public offer of Rs.330 crore ($66 million) towards the expansion plans.

"The success of our recent public issue will enable us to accelerate the journey of Domino's in India as we see large opportunity to grow further," said Shayam Bhartia, referring to the listing of Jubilant shares in September last year.

Apart from India, Jubilant has the rights for Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Officials of the two companies said out of 300 stores in India, as many as 234 also had sit-in facilities, as opposed to their strategy globally, where the main focus has been on home delivery.

Domino's also created several pizzas to suit the Indian palette like Peppy Paneer, Keema do Pyaaza, and officials said many of them have already been been taken overseas. "Our cheese burst pizza and the kabab range are major hits in several countries," said Kaul.