Saturday, August 19, 2006
| The country is witnessing a Retail and Consumer boom and Retail is most developed in Bangalore when compared with the density of its population. Retail in Mumbai is the most underdeveloped, said Hemchandra Javeri, President, Madura Garments |
He said, inspite of the Retail & Consumer boom, there is a serious mismatch as Retail is at a nascent stage with regard to the variety of formats and related infrastructure. The name of the game in the country today, primarily centres around acquiring retail space. The‘Mall’ culture has well and truly taken over the youth of today.
“There are over 750 malls, some established and many in various stages of construction coming up, but many are small under 2,50,000 sqft.
Ludhiana for instance has 22 malls, way too many for the city and 62 malls are coming up in Gurgaon. Most will fall by the wayside and will have to conform to a minimum size of half a million sqft at least” he said.
Real estate game
Malls have become a pure play real estate game, with real estate agents renting out space to retailers. One witnesses adjacencies when a Haldirams outlet is next to a Louis Vuitton outlet. Malls can survive only if the tenant makes a reasonable return on his investment and if the FSE (Food, Shopping, Entertainment) mix is appropriate to drive sustained traffic, he concluded.
Said Bijou Kurien, President & Chief Executive - Life Style, Reliance Retail “India is way behind in retail consumption and is handicapped by the lack of opportunities to consume with fewer outlets. The average sales in India per outlet is $20,000 as against $2.5 million per outlet in the US.”
Ninety seven per cent of retail sales in India is through single outlets in the unorganised sector, these single outlets will grow and expand in the future and new players will enter the business.”
Drivers of change
He said the drivers of change in Retail in India will be- the economy, consumer profile, brands, real estate, media habits, investments and technology. The good news is that most of the challenges and constraints that exist in Retail today are man-made and that can be eliminated to build a world class shopping environment for our consumers, concluded Mr Kurien
# posted by mashup @ 9:19 PM 
