R City

Mumbai

Introduction.

This is a mall Ghatkopar has been waiting for so long... it is the first mall in the suburb and thankfully once fully operational would not require people of the suburbs to travel to Mulund / Goregoan for visiting Malls.

Once both Phase I and II are completed, this is expected to be the largest mall in India (Over 6.5 Lac Sq Feet of Space), 9 Screen Multiplex, Extensive food court .. In all best experience for shoppers across Mumbai. Out of the 139 stores coming up in the first phase at R City, Following shops have already started their operations (As on April 2009)

1. Lifestyle

2. Home (again part of Lifestyle which sells Furniture)

3. Big bazaar

4. Pantaloons

5. Celio

6. AND

7. Some Optical shop

8 H&A

9 Globus (Has amazing range of clothes and accessories)

10 Lee Cooper

1. Bollywood Cafe (Outside Big Baazar) Mark & Spencers is expected to start its shop very soon

Additionally some small food stalls selling Popcorns, Ice Golas and Frankies. It is expected that the cinema and food court would be operational by end of June 09. What is great about the mall. Great Ambience, I have see some of the designs and can bet that once the Phase II is complete it will give tough competition to all malls in Mumbai and if they can build Phase II soon it will bring Ghatkopar lot of pride.

The mall looks impressive in terms of its entrance, there is ample parking while it is not as efficient as other malls like InOrbit, Phoenix etc. However please note parking is free unlike 20 rupees charged at Inorbit. Globus, Pantaloons have great collection. First time I have seen someone selling Tub full of Popcorn for Rs.30/- (Don’t be shocked it is true) and the quality is as good as any of other vendors.

What can still be improved

Mall

1. Seriously try to launch Food court and Kids Zone at the earliest

2. Conduct more events to improve customer experience, in the interim they can consider holding some key exhibitions

3. Introduce help desk kiosk to help customers, also introduce public announcement system and use it extensively for sharing offers and other important announcements

4. Security staff to manage traffic at the junction, to ensure smooth flow of traffic on the L B S Marg

Big Bazaar, it is selling lot of electronics, Clothes surprised when they have Pantaloons in same mall why so much of space is utilized for clothes section), What I did not like about Big Bazaar is following

1. Space for food articles is very cramped

2. Vegetable and Fruit vendor has no respect for cleanliness

3. Vegetable and fruit space is too cramped and limited machines to stamp the price

4. Overall space for food articles is cluttered all over, not something that you will see in DMart in Powai

5. Billing counters are extremely slow, they need to train their task to speed up the average time spend by customer

What is not so good about the mall

1. Current mall occupancy is @ 25%, while work is in progress for many outlets

2. Still lot of work is going on so if you are allergic you may invite an allergy attack while visiting the mall

3. As there is construction work in progress in other part of the mall, there is still some finishing work which is being conducted, some of the shoppers may not love the experience

4. No coffee shop (would love Barista, CCD, or similar coffee shops to have some space on ground floor)

*Why should one visit this mall

*1. If you stay close to the mall, this is first mall in the locality so you must visit it at least once

1. If you are planning to come from far away places, please be aware of the fact that I have stated above, be ready to go to a hotel after shopping, as there is no decent hotel still in the mall, there is no place where you can sip a hot coffee currently in the mall, in terms of shopping experience Pantaloons, Lifestyle, Globus have shops all across Mumbai, so not sure what makes them so special in R-City, Yes Marks & Spencer are coming with their largest stores in R-City (expected to open very soon) lets hope that has exciting offers

2. You want to buy affordable household items from Big Bazaar (surprised it also has a section of Cars / Bikes)

3. See how it feels to park your car on 8th floor, now I know one would not like to spend petrol for this experience (at least in current economic situation)