We intend to add 60 FOFO EBO’s every year: Akash Manwani

Franchisees can be just growth drivers for a retail brand, but respecting and rewarding their contribution in the growth of the brand with intending to maintain long term ties with them sets the stone for the long term growth. D’cot by Donear Industries is following the same ideology while riding on the back of franchisees with significant growth. Among its key strategies the brand is focusing on franchisees return on investment, respecting and rewarding each franchisee and putting in place strong support system, while ambitiously projecting to have 500 EBO’s through franchisees in the coming years. Thus, talking about significance of franchisees and future strategies of the brand, Akash Manwani, Assistant Vice President- Retail, Donear Industries Ltd. spoke to Franchiseindia.com.

What are the major factors driving the growth of D’Cot?
Superior quality, right mix of merchandise, pocket friendly pricing along with our franchisees esteemed trust on brand, seamless customer experience and satisfaction has been some of the major factors driving the growth of D’Cot by Donear.

What is the current presence of D’Cot stores pan India?
We are operating over 200 EBO’s across the country. There are many franchisees which are operating multiple EBO’s of D’Cot by Donear. Although we do not consider number of stores as the only parameter for fueling brand’s growth, we give significant importance to our franchisees return on investment, unit economics and providing overwhelming satisfaction to our end consumers.

What are your future expansion plans?
We intend to add 60 FOFO EBO’s every year. More importantly, we are looking at achieving double digit growth from our current franchise partner’s YOY. So our futuristic growth will be propelled by our franchisee’s unit growth and adding up new franchisees in the business.

We share strong brand recall, experience, trust and great reputation with our franchisees that has been the backbone of our business model. There are a lot of our own current franchisees who have applied for multiple locations and we have in the process a lot many new franchisees as well. We will continue to escalate the current business operation under FOFO model.

What will be the investment by franchisees?
Franchise investment for operating D’Cot by Donear store, will be approx Rs 12 to Rs 20 lakhs. Franchisees can expect outstanding return on their investment, depending upon the store location & their active involvement.

How significant is the franchising business for you?
Franchising is the core integral part of our business. In this competitive business environment growth can be attained only by creating ‘Ownership Culture’. We at D’Cot by Donear respect and reward each such individual franchisee who is not only our trade associate or partner, but also the entrepreneur. D’Cot has successful and proven business model across multiple location in the country with network of these entrepreneurs. We intend to grow our franchise network to 500 EBO’s in the near future.

What kind of support and training do you offer to your franchisees?
We have a training manual in place. We educate our franchisees as well as unit staff about complete business know-how and day in-out operations. Our support system is very strong, we do aggressive brand promotion, marketing campaign, advertising, timely stock delivery and its replenishment and synergy with our franchise to make sure that his unit economics turn up well.

Five dos you follow as a retail franchisor for business growth?
Five Do’s as a Franchisor that we follow are cost engineering, leveraging information technology, effective supply chain management, effective store operations, selecting a right active partner and right active location.