Besides, the company is also planning to shed its image as an upmarket Indipop brand and will cater to regional and devotional music, a la T-Series, Archies Music general manager Praveen sethi, said here.

Regarding the hive-off plans, he said, "It is being considered at present. Though the company would emerge as a separate entity pursuant to the exercise, it will remain a part of the umbrella brand of Archies."

The company is also working towards increasing its presence across the country as part of its efforts to foray into regional and devotional music. "Four devotional albums have already been planned, including one by Anup Jalota that would hit the shelves in August." Another devotional album is being planned in Marathi.

The first regional album, which would be in Punjabi, would be released inSeptember. "The idea is to create a diverse catalogue as we feel we will not be able to survive with Indipop alone," he said adding that he does not intend to give competition to market leader Super Cassettes Industries' T-Series.

However, there are no plans to foray into film music. "The company board has taken an in-principle decision not to venture into film music as we feel if we have to be a major player in this segment, we need to be headquartered in Mumbai. It is a different ballgame altogether and there is no way we can venture into this segment being based in Delhi," Sethi said.

Archies Music is the audio division of AGGL formed with a seed capital of Rs 50 lakh and had in 1998-99 registered a turnover of Rs 3.5 crore. The company has targetted a 28.5 per cent surge in turnover during the current fiscal to Rs 4.5 crore.

Meanwhile, AGGL has targetted to clock a Rs 100 crore turnover by the year 2002-03, up 66 per cent from Rs 60 crore in 1998-99. The bottomlines are also set to improve andoperating profit is likely to be in the range of Rs 25 to 30 crore.

Archies has chalked out an ambitious growth plan and intends to set up a series of company-owned retail outlets across the country. The first of these outlets would be opened in Mumbai next month. In addition to this, the company is planning to add around 25 more franchisee outlets to its list by the end of the current fiscal.

During the year ended 1998-99, the company had recorded a 31 per cent increase in sales and 86 per cent growth in net profit. The turnover of the company increased to Rs 60.26 crore from Rs 46.04 crore in the previous year. Profit before tax reached Rs 12.74 crore from Rs 6.60 crore and net profit touched Rs 8.81 crore as against Rs 4.75 crore a year ago.

The company is also in the process of identifying a range of items which could be included in the list of products being sold under the Archies brandname. It has already identified goggles as one of the products and is looking at including ties and imitationjewellery in the list.

AGGL is a listed company with the promoters controlling 66 per cent stake in the venture. Mutual funds and public control 16 per cent each in the venture while the remaining two per cent is held by foreign institutional investors.

The company is also expanding its retail presence beyond the sub-continent into the Gulf and presently the company has a franchise network of 398 outlets.

AGGL had recently got the shareholders' nod to issue one-to-one bonus shares. The board of directors of the company has fixed September 15, 1999 as the record date for the purpose of bonus issue.