INDIA Welcomes IKEA

IKEA. Photo: pixabay.com

Swedish furniture giant IKEA has announced formal plans to expand into India, with the opening of its first Indian warehouse set for just a few weeks from now.

 

The mega-company will build a 37,000 square foot store within the Indian city of Hyderabad (southern India), with the intended goal of opening two dozen further locations (and supporting warehouses) within the Indian cities of Delhi,Bangalore, and Mumbai.

HOLY COWS
The iconic IKEA restaurant within India’s Hyderabad store won’t be serving traditional Swedish meatballs; since many Indian Muslims are vegetarians or otherwise refrain from consuming pork or beef. (Cows are a holy animal to India’s Hindu population and pork isn’t popular.)

However, IKEA won’t change its business of tempting visitors with delightful morsels; with India’s IKEA planning a menu of hot chicken & vegetarian bowls,and other Swedish and Indian delights.

SALMON & JAM
Ikea India PR Manager Nived Moirangthem gave media comment of IKEA’s intent to alter their traditional menu, saying “It doesn’t mean we won’t have Swedish items. Salmon is popular, and we’ll certainly offer Lingonberry jam.’ –

“Because so many people in India are vegetarian, we’ll offer a 50% vegetarian menu, but we’ll replace beef and pork with chicken meatballs. We’ll also have a special vegetarian ‘non-meat’ meatball, with all ingredients sourced from local Indian suppliers but keeping in mind our famous Swedish recipe,” – said Moirangthem.

IKEA is not a publicly traded stock company. Instead, most of its operations including design & manufacturing of furniture are maintained by trust; INGKA Holding; with headquarters based within Holland.

© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today