Swedish home furnishing retail giant IKEA, which is set to kick-start India operations from Hyderabad six years after it announced its foray, is upbeat on e-commerce business opportunities with hopes that India could outshine global average e-commerce sales, said chief executive Peter Betzel Interacting with select media persons in Hyderabad on Wednesday, ahead of the launch of India operations on July 19, he said the furniture giant plans to commence e-commerce operations from Mumbai next year, even as they seek to learn from multi-channel sales push.In the backdrop of growing digitisation and e-commerce in India, IKEA expects to see its e-commerce sales in India to significantly overtake global average of around 8-10%, said Peter, adding that they will commence online sales from Mumbai next year.“We are also looking at opening multiple small format stores of 1,000-5,000 square meters each in bigger cities like Mumbai for having more touch points. Simultaneously, we will open online shopping operations from Mumbai next year and spread to other cities,” said Peter.IKEA plans to offer online sales in cities where it can support them with fulfilment, delivery and assembling services. “We would like to start online sales to begin with from Mumbai and we are quite sure that in a couple of years we will be available for online shopping in a lot of cities.”In all, IKEA sees potential to set up large or small format stores in at least 49 Indian cities with a population of more than a million each over the years. “After Hyderabad, we will open stores in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune, Chennai and others. We are curious to try multi-channel sales — large format, small format, with store, without store online.”Admitting that real estate prices were on the rise in India and IKEA was looking at opening more small format stores in many Indian cities, Peter refused to divulge additional investments that the company may look at. IKEA had on June 2012 committed Rs 10,500 crore of investments to open 25 stores in India by 2025.IKEA India’s first store at Hyderabad, coming up over 400,000 square feet at an investment of around Rs 1,000 crore, would house the furniture giant’s largest restaurant globally with a seating capacity of 1,000 serving both Indian and Swedish dishes.The IKEA teams had visited over 1,000 homes in India with varied income levels and lifestyles to understand their needs and dreams before finalising around 7,500 varieties of home furnishing items to be made available at its India stores.