Kishore Biyani-promoted Future Group announced a 50:50 joint venture with UK footwear brand Clarks

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on Tuesday. The JV, called Clarks Future Footwear, will retail its products through 20 standalone showrooms that are expected to open by the end of this year in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.

The Rs 10,000-crore Clarks group is looking at revenue of Rs 100 crore in the first two years. “Over the next five years, we would be looking at opening 100 stores and a revenue of up to Rs 250 crore. We expect India to be among the top five markets in the next five years,” said CEO of Clarks Future Footwear S Ramaprasad.

Clarks products were earlier retailed through Reliance Retail.

“The joint venture company is targeting the upper middle class and middle class segments, and we are looking at a presence in four cities in the first year. We will enter eight to nine cities in the second year of operations. We are however not going to restrict ourselves to mono-brand retail. We are looking at placing our products in multi-brand stores and also setting up shop-in-shops in chains like Lifetstyle, Metro, Pantaloons and Central, to name a few,” said Ramaprasad.

The products will be priced between Rs 2,999 and Rs 3,999.

CEO of the sports division of Pantaloon Retail, Ravdeep Singh, said the JV would allow the retailer to focus on the footwear segment, which he said did not contribute significantly to the company's top line at present.

"This is the first step we have taken in launching everyday footwear, a diversification from Planet Sports. We would define our strategy by the end of this year in terms of how big we want to be in the footwear segment,” said Singh.

A recent report by consultancy firm McKinsey pegs the organised footwear market in India at Rs 4,500 crore. The research also predicts that by 2020 organised footwear retail will touch Rs 90,000 crore.

Clarks has been sourcing products from India for its global operations for over 30 years. The company sources about 2.5 million pairs of shoes annually from here and intends to double that in the next three years. Last year, Clarks sold 54 million pairs of shoes globally.