Trent Limited will be expanding its hypermarket format stores, Star Bazar India, in the country. It opened its first hypermarket in Ahmedabad in October this year and will be adding two more in Banagalore and Mumbai during 2005-06. The company is earmarking investments for the same said chairperson Simone Tata but did not disclose the amount. Ms Tata said she was happy with the way Trent was shaping up and it was good to be in a competitive retail segment.

Currently, Trent has 16 Westside stores and it will be adding two more to the chain in Gurgaon and Mumbai by February 2005, she added. Mumbai will now have four Westside stores. Next financial year, Baroda too will come on to the retailer’s map. Westside began as a store that only housed Trent’s in- house brand but the company is now experimenting with some limited outside brands. This is being done on a pilot basis at its stores in Kolkata and Delhi, Ms Tata said. But she said, they did not want to pursue apparels from other designers.

Ms Tata was in Pune for the inauguration of the ‘Images of Greatness’ exhibition and was talking to the media on the sidelines of the show. The exhibition organised by the Tata Central Archives opened on Wednesday. It celebrates the birth centenaries of JRD Tata and Naval H Tata. The Tatas are also observing the death centenary of founder, Jamsetji Nusserwani Tata. “This has been a momentous year for the Tata Group and the exhibition was a way of bringing the Tatas to a younger generation of people,” Ms Tata said.

The exhibition showcases photographs, letters, memorabilia and awards culled out from the archival collections. The Bharat Ratna received by JRD Tata is on display, recreation of JRD’s Mumbai office room, his air commodore uniform are among the interesting exhibits. The Tata Central Archives is preserving the history of the house of Tatas for posterity. The archives traces the history of the organisation from inception to its present status.

“I was present at the meeting in 1991 at Bombay House when it was decided to build the Tata Archives but I did not know how they would go about it but after 14 years of work they have done a spectacular job,” Ms Simone Tata said after the opening as she walked down memory lane. “This archives will be the benchmark for people who want to set up their archives,” she added. The Archives based in Pune has a repository of thousands of documents, photographs, letters, press clippings, memorabilia and audio/video recordings.