NTC, Pantaloon Retail plan retail JV

NEW DELHI: National Textile Corporation (NTC) is planning to float a joint venture with Kishore Biyani-owned Pantaloon Retail (Future Group) to cash in on the retail boom in the country. The public sector company, which has been unlocking value by selling surplus land assets across states, is now planning to hive off its retail business into a separate company. The proposed JV, which would take over the retail business, will be a standalone venture.

Although NTC may have a majority stake in the joint venture with a 51% holding, management control would be vested with the private sector partner, sources in the know said. NTC has already joined hands with several private sector players, including Alok Industries, Bhaskar Industries and Pantaloon, to leverage its land holdings. When asked about the possibilities of a retail JV with NTC, Pantaloon Retail managing director Kishore Biyani said: “As we are partners now, we are talking about every possibility.”

NTC has 113 retail outlets across the country, including those at prime locations in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. Most of these outlets are on NTC land and this would be an added advantage to the JV partner, who otherwise would have had to fork out huge sums on rentals alone. Retail space in prime locations is very costly now.

“We have some plans for our retail business,” said NTC chairman K Ramachandran Pillai. He, however, said it would be too premature to say anything now as the company is pre-occupied with the five JVs it has formed with private players for the revival of its Mumbai and Aurangabad mills. “We would start the initiative towards revamping our retail business once all the formalities of the existing JVs are over,” Mr Pillai said.

NTC is formulating a different corporate strategy to position itself strategically in the domestic textile space. The joint venture initiatives are part of the company’s new game plan. The Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) has already approved the company’s restructuring plans, which include possible mergers, demergers and joint ventures.

The joint venture partnerships for NTC mills was cleared by a group of ministers (GoM) constituted to look into the affairs of NTC. It is expected that any partnership for the retail business would also be on the lines of the existing ones, where the private partner will have management control, but NTC the majority on the board.