Men's D2C brand Banana Club has opened its 20th store in Tirupati, a temple city in South India. What stands out is that a brand which had built its base in major cities — Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Indore, and Chennai — has chosen a religious city drawing more than 40,000 pilgrims a day as its next move. The plan is to more than double its store count to 50 within the year and raise its annual revenue run rate (ARR) to 3 billion rupees (₹300 crore) by 2027. For Japanese confectionery makers and producers of dried goods or gifts, this offers a concrete hint for a store-opening approach: how to build high-footfall pilgrimage and tourism locations into a sales channel.
Banana Club is a men's fashion brand launched in Bengaluru in 2023 by Neel Bafna and Prashanth Lalwani. It has reached 20 physical stores just a few years after founding, and the Tirupati opening marks that milestone. Its store openings so far have centered on major cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Indore, and Chennai, and it has most recently also opened stores in Mysore and in Himayatnagar, Hyderabad.
What's worth noting is that the brand has adopted an "offline-first" approach. Despite its D2C origins, it has made physical stores the main axis of growth alongside online channels such as its own website, app, and Myntra. In that context, choosing the temple city of Tirupati can be read as an assessment that the location itself — with its dense inflow of people — functions as a "customer-generating device."
Tirupati is the gateway to the Sri Venkateswara Temple at Tirumala, a Hindu holy site. Tirumala draws roughly 1.2 million pilgrims a month, more than 40,000 a day, a figure said to swell to 70,000–80,000 a day during festival periods such as Brahmotsavam. It is one of the most-visited religious sites in the world, with a flow of people that never lets up throughout the year.
At the same time, locals have long pointed to a problem: this overwhelming number of visitors hasn't been fully converted into local spending. Many pilgrims head straight home after completing their darshan (temple viewing), and spending during their stay tends to be limited to lodging and meals. Put another way, there remains untapped potential in demand for easy-to-visit shopping spots and souvenirs before or after the temple visit. Banana Club's 20th store can be positioned as a bet on converting this "passing wave of people" into purchases.
For this store opening, the figures reported by various media outlets have been cross-checked against multiple sources and organized here. Care is needed when converting crore (= 10 million): an ARR of Rs 150 crore equals 1.5 billion rupees, and Rs 300 crore equals 3 billion rupees. Yen conversions use an approximate rate of 1 rupee ≈ ¥1.8.
| Item | Value | Approximate yen equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Current number of stores | 20 stores | — |
| Target by End of 2026 | 50 stores | — |
| Current ARR | 1.5 billion rupees (Rs 150 crore) | Approx. ¥2.7 billion |
| 2027 ARR Target | 3 billion rupees (Rs 300 crore) | Approx. ¥5.4 billion |
| 2025 Funding Raised | 122.5 million rupees (Rs 12.25 crore) | Approx. ¥220 million |
| Founded | 2023, Bengaluru | — |
The plan is to grow stores 2.5 times, from 20 to 50, within the year, and double ARR within two years. That's a fairly aggressive pace of expansion, and it suggests an aim to build up the base of the store network by extending beyond flagship urban locations to high-footfall sites tied to pilgrimage and tourism, like Tirupati.
Several retail trade media outlets have reported this move as a "deepening strategy that extends a foundation built in major cities across all of South India." The pattern moves from securing South India's core cities — Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai — down into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities such as Mysore and now Tirupati.
Paraphrasing the views of industry figures, they broadly converge on three points. First, an assessment that as online customer-acquisition costs rise, a physical location that draws people remains a strong customer-generating asset. Second, an expectation that pilgrimage and tourism cities draw people in from a wide area beyond just local customers, so footfall can exceed what the local trade-area population alone would suggest. Third, a more cautious view that success or failure at such locations hinges on how well a retailer can design "add-on purchases" after the temple visit. High-footfall locations may have large numbers of people, but shopping routes and dwell time are hard to predict, putting a premium on precision in product mix and store layout.
The takeaway Japanese food makers can draw from this case is clear: measure a location by "footfall passing through," not just "resident trade-area population." Long-shelf-life gift categories in particular — confectionery, dried goods, dried fruit — pair well with the "take-home demand" of pilgrims and tourists. The same logic behind Banana Club's bet on a temple city applies even more directly to gift food.
Translated into a concrete action, the first target should be "a location where the stay is short but the flow of people never stops." Within Japan, examples close to this would be the approach roads to shrines and temples, airports, station concourses, and local product halls at tourist destinations. What works here is a product that's light, compact, shelf-stable, and packaged to connect with the local context. Dried vegetables, dried fruit, and assorted dried-goods sets meet these conditions as-is. Whether a retailer can place a single "shelf of easy-to-grab souvenirs" along the pilgrimage or tourist route is what determines whether passing footfall converts into sales.
Beyond that, there's also something to learn from Banana Club's "offline-first" approach: build awareness and customer data online while letting people handle the physical product where crowds gather. For gift food too, a company can bring an item that has become an e-commerce staple to tourism sites and events, and feed the reactions gathered from on-the-spot sampling and purchases back into product improvement — building the same back-and-forth loop.
In India, D2C brands' "return to offline" is becoming one broader trend. As the cost of online advertising rises, brands are re-conceiving physical stores as frontline bases for customer contact and inventory. Banana Club's Tirupati opening can be read as a sign that this trend is starting to spread its footprint beyond big cities into regional tourism and religious cities.
In the food category too, the souvenir and gift market that captures tourism and pilgrimage demand is gaining presence as foot traffic recovers. For Japanese makers considering entry from overseas, rather than aiming for nationwide rollout right away, a staged approach — confirming how a product sells at one high-footfall location before expanding — is more realistic. As related examples for companies considering entry into India, the local rollout of everyday infrastructure and services covered in Livpure's move into experiential stores and coverage of a locally rooted retail chain's push northward, as in Popees' expansion into North India are also useful references for thinking through how to read location and trade area.
Tirupati is located in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, and is a major South Indian city that bustles year-round with pilgrims heading to the Tirumala Temple. Rail and airport access are well developed, and visits from a wide area beyond pilgrimage alone can be expected. As a store location, product mix and store layout need to be designed around the premise of "short stays, high footfall."
Similarly, for a store strategy that raises brand value starting from a city's core commercial location, Lukson's flagship store in Mumbai's Bandra is also useful material for thinking about presentation in a high-price-point location.
Banana Club's 20th store in Tirupati is a good example of a store-opening philosophy that treats a place with a dense flow of people as an opportunity in itself. The next action for Japanese confectionery, dried-goods, and gift makers is to choose one of their core products that meets the criteria of "long shelf life, lightweight, souvenir-appropriate," and test-place it at a single high-footfall location, such as an approach road to a temple, an airport, or a local product hall at a tourist site. Reassess location using a map of foot traffic rather than a map of resident trade-area population. Feeding the sales data gathered there back into product improvement and the next store opening would recreate, in the context of gift food, the same "offline-first" loop Banana Club is running in India.
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