8 Amazing Shopping Spots in Pune (2024)
Pune is Mumbai’s twin city but living in Pune is much cheaper as compared to Mumbai. But both Punekars and Mumbaikars believe in one thing – if it is available, it is available somewhere else for less. For a decade or so, with malls springing up in Pune, it has become a ‘hep’ place, with most famous brands setting up their shops on FC Road and JM Road. But these are not the only shopping places where you get a good deal for something that you have set your heart on, in Pune. Here are other places best for a shopping binge in Pune.
Note: While all the shops are supposed to open up at 10 in the morning, don’t keep high hopes and enter these places at 9:59 AM. Pune is famous for taking it slow, so the shops open between 10:30 to 11:30. Also, you need to check how safe and legal it is to adopt pets from any shop, let alone the ones in Mahatma Phule Mandai.
8 Amazing Shopping Spots in Pune
1. Fashion Street
The name of the street is enough to get the discreet shopper hopping towards it. Fashion Street in Pune is a flea-market cum fashion spectacle that Punekars know and love. With more than 400 stalls that offer you clothes, accessories, and other riffraff for men, women, and children, this is one place that you must shop in.
Not just clothes and accessories, you will also find electronics and toys as well as cosmetics. This a haven of street vendors, so it is mostly ‘take it or leave it’. It is well-nigh impossible to get a shop with a trial room here. For someone interested in this kind of thing, several vendors sell rip-offs of originals with their uniquely creative names.
Also, it is a street haven, so make sure you do not have any flick-able valuables on you. This one opens at around; the crowd starts pouring in at about 12 and its wrap up by 9 in the night. Fashion Street is in Bhavani Peth, Shobhapur, Kasba Peth.
2. Juna Bazaar
This is a unique market, for retro and antique artifacts in Pune. This market in Pune is perfect for someone looking to do-over their house with the retro and antique look. Have a go at the brass statues – the kind of ones you have seen in the movies – artifacts that are at unbelievable prices and handicrafts as chic as the ones that the biggest brands sell today.
This is a place for some unique products as well, like old typewriters, rare coins, musical instruments, and portraits and posters. One aspect you need to be careful about is the way you come across to the vendors. If they think you are a yuppie urban overwhelmed by the market, they will quote you a bomb, leaving no place for bargaining. Also, you need to be incredibly careful about buying whatever you plan to from here. Like everywhere else, some vendors here try to make a quick buck by conning customers. After all, unless you can professionally age a product, you can never be sure that it is the real thing. Tread carefully, and you will come off with a bargain.
Some of the shops are old and offer you the antiques, but the rip-offs have come here as well. There is a word that this market is more than 200 years old.
This market in Pune is operational only Sundays and Wednesdays. It opens at 10 AM and shuts down at 10 PM. Junabazaar is in Kasbapeth, at the Veer Santaji Ghorpade Road in Pune.
3. Mahatma Phule Mandai
This is the municipality market in Pune, so there are shops selling all kinds of knick-knacks as well as fruits and veggies for your daily requirements. It is owned and run by the Pune Municipal Corporation. There are more than 500 stalls selling various products including perfumes, and yes, pets. The Mandai is in Shukrawar Peth and the timing is from 10 AM to 8 PM.
4. Fergusson College Road
The name of the road says it all. This is a road in Pune that has a smattering of shops selling various products on the cheap. you will find dresses, tops, t-shirts, shoes, knock-off wallets, wristwatches, sunglasses, almost everything that your little heart desires – and at a knocked-off price as well. For a few years now, the FC Road shops have become a haven for phone accessories as well – all kinds of accessories, starting from earphones to back cases.
Fergusson College Road is in Shivajinagar, Pune. As usual, the shops open at 10 in the morning and wrap up at 10 in the evening.
5. Appa Balwant Chowk, Pune
The place that is said to be the cradle of education in Maharashtra needs a stretch of street shops that exclusively sell books, right? So, we have Appa Balwant Chowk that has a steady stream of book lovers venture in to buy their favorite books. The shops mainly sell academic books on a second-hand basis, but there are some shops that sell fiction books and first-hand books as well. This is a place to go to if you have a certain textbook that is not available anywhere else in Pune. ABC, as it is lovingly called by book enthusiasts, is near Laxmi Road in Budhwar Peth.
6. Laxmi Road
If you have shifted recently to Pune and want to spruce up your house on a budget, head to Laxmi Road. This is a place with a string of shops that sells you everything, from household utensils to home decor to some of the newly opened shops that sell tops, t-shirts, and other clothes. Laxmi Road is also famous for its shops selling sarees and female accessories. You will find sellers selling some of the most beautiful and authentic Paithani saree and other designer sarees.
7. M G Road
Once upon a time, before the malls, even the biggest brands were available in single and retails stores by the street – that concept is known as a High Street. MG Road and JM Road both are living and thriving examples of this concept. Both these roads in Pune have the best of both worlds, famous retail stories as well as street vendors that sell beautiful accessories and quality clothes.
8. Pune Central (Hadapsar)
If you are craving the shopping experience that you get in Mumbai and other metros, Pune has 12 malls that you can visit to buy things as you did back home. One of them is the Central Mall in Hadapsar. It is a mall, so you have the choicest of brands selling their wares here in single and retail shops.
These are the shopping areas in Pune that you must visit the next time you are in Pune.