This year alone, the company rose 1.3 per cent to 38.8 billion euros ($44.5 billion) from 38.3 billion euros a year earlier, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The furniture retail giant plans to expand to 49 cities pan India by 2030 - it will open doors in Mumbai by 2019 - through both small and large format stores. In the past fiscal year that ended in August, IKEA websites received 2.5 billion visits, an 8.7 per cent jump over its previous financial year.

"There's a lot of people that chose not to buy from us because they don't have a vehicle or because they don't have the time to interact with us, so this is what we are exploring now", said Ikea Group CEO Jesper Brodin.

"We're exploring new store formats in city centres - all with the aim to improve the meeting with our customers both physically and digitally", said Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ikea's Ingka Group, which operates Ikea stores in the US, Europe, China and other global markets.

"We see that we have flattened out a bit on sales in existing stores, while we have strong growth through expansion and online", Loof said.

The company will in the coming years open stores in Chile, Colombia and Peru through a new Ikea franchisee called Falabella as part of its first foray into South America, Inter Ikea said.

Last month, the company said it planned to open 25 retail stores across India by 2020.

The next store would be in Delhi, Antony told a news agency recently. The company will also be launching its e-commerce operations by March next year.

Barbara Martin Coppola, chief technology officer at IKEA Group, the owner of most IKEA stores, said tests underway ranged from connecting staff with customers via video to artificial intelligence tools to help people furnish their homes.

However, the company expected high number of online orders in coming days, he added. "It will be a faster and bigger expansion than when we've entered new markets before". That means new Ikea franchisees should be able to "reach bigger volume faster with lower costs", Loof said.

On a comparable store basis, retail sales were up just 1 percent in local currencies. Its CEO, Jesper Brodin, told Reuters online sales jumped almost 50 percent to account for 8 percent of total turnover.