Pune – an education hub that attracts students from across the country – also has a plethora of opportunities for the young to hang out, eat and shop. Gopal Krishna Gokhale Road, popularly known as FC Road, is one stretch in the city that offers all these opportunities in one place.
There are several street shopping destinations in the city, such as Lakshmi Road, Tulshibaug, Fashion Street, and a slew of others in the camp area. Smaller street shopping bays are coming up in many areas. However, FC Road remains the most popular among these options, especially when it comes to the students from a number of colleges that lie in the vicinity, such as Brihan Maharashtra Commerce College, Modern College, ILS Law College, College of Agriculture, College of Engineering, and Symbiosis.
We spoke to student shoppers rummaging through the street shops on the busy stretch to find out why FC Road works for them.
Sanvika Ganvir, a first-year BSc (Electronics) student at Fergusson who lives in Talegaon, says: “Paas mai hai! It is close by and has a lot of variety. Almost all that we go to a mall for can be bought here and at a cheaper rate.”
Another FC student Aneesha Patole, studying BSc (Statistics), says that she prefers to shop here because being a student she does not have a lot of money to spend and this place offers her the opportunity to buy within a limited budget.
Pehel Karwa, a Class 10 student from PICT Model School who resides in Balewadi, says that she prefers FC Road to the street shopping areas in Pune Camp because of superior quality. “The prices here are a little higher but quality is good,” she says.
Soham Shahane, a second-year mechanical engineering student at Modern College of Arts, Science and Commerce, says: “The collection in FC Road keeps getting updated very frequently, which lets students choose and ask for more and better choices. But it is not the same case with Lakshmi Road which does not provide new collections very often to the students.”
Students staying in far-off localities, too, flock to FC Road to shop. Anushka, a first-year law student from MIT, says that being a Punekar she prefers FC Road over other places like Lakshmi Road as the latter generally offers traditional attires and accessories whereas students look for trendy clothes and accessories these days. When asked about the price difference, she says a pair of jeans that costs around Rs 1,100 elsewhere, costs barely Rs 500 in FC Road.
