Expanding its footprint into South India, PVR bluO has forayed into the Bangalore market with its first bowling centre being launched in the Silicon City.
Located at Orion Mall, the bowling centre is India’s largest with 27 lanes spread across 40,000 sq ft area. “The response for our existing centres has been overwhelming and thus, we have aggressive expansion plans for bluO towards the launch of eight bowling centres with 162 lanes in the coming three years,” said PVR Ltd CMD Ajay Bijli.
The company also plans to launch bowling centres in Pune, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Noida etc, the CMD added.
PVR bluO is a 51:49 joint venture between PVR and Thailand’s Major Cineplex Group.
Major Cineplex is a public listed company on the Thailand Stock Exchange that operates over 500 bowling lanes in Thailand.
PVR bluO currently operates two centres in Delhi, NCR and one in Bangalore. bluO currently has three centres with one each in Delhi, Gurgaon and Bangalore.
Going forward, PVR bluO may look to set up another two bowling centres in Banglaore by the end of this year. With bowling gaining popularity among youth, companies like PVR bluO are looking to increasingly capitalise on the consumer’s interest for such leisure sports.
Separately, PVR Group President & Chief Executive Officer Pramod Arora said the company is looking to expand its lifestyle entertainment business by adding more brands like bluO.
“We have our lifestyle entertainment business that is going robust. We would be adding more brands which represent the lifestyle side of the business,” he told Express.
As part of the expansion plans within the lifestyle business, Arora hinted that health and beauty segment is where the company may look to enter.
The other segments that PVR is closely looking at is cafes and food courts.