Hi, I recently visited the new ’’Hyderabad Central’’ mall that vowed to take visitors by storm and leave them an open mouth and gwaping. Well, to start with, its an excellant choice of location.
Centrally located at Panjagutta Jn., it would augment the scores of existing shopping plazas (so, you come here and you have all you want to shop in the neighbourhood). I drove my two wheeler two floors below land level to find the parking space.
Work is still going on and so all of us were engulfed in cement dust and had to run up to save ourselves from being powered. Once up, it was spick and span neat. They have four floors at present. The first floor is for women. Im not sure about the varieties offered or pricing or anything else for that matter as I hardly strolled along that floor. Apart from clothing, there were some of the irresistables there like hand-bags, footwear, cosmetics etc.
The second floor is for men. Most of this section concentrates on Formals and Party wear. They have got Very Many brands (strangely I couldnt locate Allen Solley and a few others). But the problem was that each brand had a very limited variety and most of the colors were repeating in many brands. So, you need not expect variety that blows your mind off.
The third floor is for teens and Casuals. It also has, almost, every known brand (atleast for the common man like me) under its roof. The variety is also more impressive that the formals section. Ofcourse, I could not locate an Ash Black Jeans Jacket that I have been looking for a long time. Also, the trial rooms were a little limited therby making huge crowds wait.
And the BIGGEST PROBLEM was that of alteration. For the entire Mall there were ONLY 6 tailors (one of the sales men hinted me) and so it took a MINIMUM of 2 hours to get your pants length altered. It also has a sports-wear section with a few reputed brands. The fourth floor is a little different.
It has a Kids section (no idea of the what’s and how’s of it), a food stop (that is unnecessarily VERY expensive. One plate of Pani Puri, that normally costs you 5 rupees, is 20 rupees here, a Pav-Bhaji that is normally 20 Rs. is 45 rs. here but the taste is also not so much worth the price. Overall, I rate this food stop, NOT WORTHY. Then, there is a music shoppee and a books and Mags. shop.
The music one is impressive but the books shop isnt too impressive. It also has some household shops (like crockery etc) and I heard people talking that its a little expensive. They also have an home-electronics section with TVs, Fridges and Audio systems and I couldnt see any discounts or festival offers and also spotted many UN-HEARD-OF brands.
The ground floor has a food-super-market and its just like any of our food worlds. And I heard comments that the bakery products sold there are stale (didnt dare try one). It also has the facility to deposit your stuff but unfortunately, you cannot deposit your helmet, you have to carry it with you. The staff are a little bit ill-trained.
In the sense that they are not sure of some product’s location (for eg. I asked a few of them where I can find a case for my mobile and they were so confused and finally gave me the wrong floor. Later, after scanning entire area, I concluded that these accessories were just NOT available).
Another note worthy thing is that, they have escalators for visitors going up, but not for visitors coming down (same was the case with Prasads Multiplex also. Maybe its the way it is). They have shopping bags with wheels so that you can drag them along with you during your cruise, but finally they give you a polythene bag (ofcourse of a good quality). So, that was my evening at Hyderabad Central.
And the bottom line: If you are looking exclusively for selecting cloths from very many brands, then this is the place. Otherwise, there are more convenient and better places like Big Bazaar. Ya, you can surely enjoy watching guys n gals out there if you got nothing to do and just want to kill your time. So, happy shopping. _H_