Tanvi Shukla

Mumbai: Neeta Ahuja has a keen eye — be it for shopping or her favourite pastime shooting.

Every weekend, the 65-year-old Ahuja tags her family along to a nearby mall,where they spend the day shopping. And later, they frolic around in the entertainment area,where Neeta tries her hand on shooting games with her grandson.

Like the Ahujas, the entertainment zones in malls have become a favourite hangout for families willing to spend quality time together. But, it’s the marketers who sense a greater opportunity in these entertainments zones as these areas can be the big gest allure for customers to keep coming back.

Small wonder, retailers such as Shoppers Stop are setting up entertainment areas, which have features such as amusement rides, driving and biking games, vending machines and a bowling alley.

Sonaal Chopra, chief executive officer, Timezone, said, “An entertainment zone helps in retaining the consumers for a longer time in the malls and also makes them keep coming back. While the initial pull comes because of the hypermarkets and cinema, it is the food court and entertainment zone that help in sustaining the business.”

To meet the demand, Timezone, a joint venture between Shoppers Stop and Australiabased LAI games, has set up a factory for manufacturing games in India. Initially, the unit would cater to the domestic needs, but the company also plans to export in the future. In fact, it is planning to feed games to other players in the country.

Timezone has five entertainment zones and is targeting to have 14 by the year end. The company plans to set up 100 Timezones by 2013. Each of these outlets will be spread over 10,000 square feet.

Dharmesh Jain of Nirmal Lifestyle says a developer needs to cater to diversified interests in the mall and this is where movies, food and fun zones for kids become important.

“Our existing malls have entertainment zones and we are also talking to international retailers for our new projects,” he said.

Internationally, entertainment zones are used as a crowd-puller and anchor in a mall.

In India, retail outlets are the main attraction for customers and entertainment is used merely for gaining loyal customers. A major challenge that this capital-intensive business faces is maintenance. Not enough talent is available to handle and repair the imported machines in entertainment zones.

Timezone has brought in manpower from Australia to help maintain its centres and intends to provide this assistance to other players in the industry, too. “The smell of fresh paint is absolutely necessary in these centres, else there is something wrong. So, you need to constantly keep refreshing the place,” said Kalathil.

Despite mall developers facing various hurdles in setting up entertainment zones — they require very high investment of around Rs 3 crore for each outlet, cost of maintaining the imported machines is also very high and there’s a dearth of mechanics to repair these games — they are, nevertheless, betting big on this new tactic for getting higher footfalls and gaining loyal customers.

Source : DNA