Currently, Big Bazaar has 98 stores in the country, including the recently opened store in Mysore on September 26th 2008. Further to this, Big Bazaar will be opening three more stores in a single day i.e. 30th September 2008, which will take the eventual count to 101 stores in the country. These three stores opening shortly in Pune (Kalyani Nagar), Cuttack (Darga Bazaar) and Delhi (Rajouri Garden). Big Bazaar’s journey began in October 2001, when the young, first generation entrepreneur Kishore Biyani opened the country’s first hypermarket retail outlet in Kolkatta (then Calcutta). In the same month, two more stores were added one each in Hyderabad and Mumbai, thus starting on a successful sojourn which began the chapter of organized retailing in India. Speaking on this momentous occasion and remembering the days of conceptualising the hypermarket idea Mr. Kishore Biyani said, We initially decided to name the format as “Bazaar” because we had designed the store keeping the Indian mandi style in mind. Since the size of the hypermarket was big than an average mandis, the thought came to name it as “Big Bazaar”. However, we had freezed on the punch line “Isse Se Sasta Aur Achha Kahi Nahi” much before we met the creative agency to design the final logo of Big Bazaar. Though, Big Bazaar was started purely as a fashion format including apparel, cosmetics, accessory and general merchandise, the first Food Bazaar format was added as Shop-In-Shop within Big Bazaar in the year 2002. Today, Big Bazaar, with its wide range of products and service offering, reflects the aspirations of millions of Indians. The journey of Big Bazaar can be divided into two phases one pre and the other post January 26th, 2005, when the company rewrote the retail chapter in India, with the introduction of a never-before sales campaign “Sasbe Sasta Din”. In just one day, almost the whole of India descended at various Big Bazaar stores in the country to shop at their favourite shopping destination.

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