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| Edited By: |Source: |Updated: Sep 14, 2017, 04:01 PM IST
Praveena Sharma & Ashish Tiwari
BANGALORE: Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, is planning to write an India chapter in its retail story. And guess who has it chosen to pen this story with?
Sources say it’s none other than retail major Future group, which owns brands like Pantaloon and Big Bazaar, and which operate through 3.5 million sq ft of retail space with over 100 stores across 25 cities.
According to sources, the US-based bookseller has already initiated talks with the Kishore Biyani-owned group for a possible tie-up to launch its book stores in the country.
“The talks are still at a preliminary stage. It is not known what format the US book retailer is looking at,” the source said.
When contacted, Future group CEO Kishore Biyani denied the development: “There is no truth in it,” he said.
The Rs 2,000-crore Future group already has a presence in book retailing through its Pantaloon Retail, but not on the scale of Barnes & Noble. The US book major, which also stocks music, DVDs, newspapers and magazines, currently operates 801 bookstores in 50 states.
It sells close to 445 million books per year through it online and offline operations and is the second-largest coffee house in the US.
