The Indian retail sector has traditionally consisted of small neighborhood kirana stores but has increasingly modernized and organized. Major developments include the emergence of shopping malls and centers in urban areas in the 1990s, as well as various retail formats such as supermarkets and hypermarkets. While organized retail makes up only 3% of the total Indian retail market currently, the sector is expected to grow rapidly due to rising incomes, population growth, and urbanization. Several large Indian retailers have emerged but the sector remains fragmented compared to large international retailers like Walmart.

1. The Indian Retail Sector

2. Industry Evolution
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Traditionally retailing in India can be traced to
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The emergence of the neighborhood ‘Kirana’ stores catering to the convenience of the consumers
Era of government support for rural retail: Indigenous franchise model of store chains
run by Khadi & Village Industries Commission
1980s experienced slow change as India began to open up economy.
Textiles sector with companies like Bombay Dyeing, Raymond's, S Kumar's and Grasim first
saw the emergence of retail chains
Later Titan successfully created an organized retailing concept and established a series of
showrooms for its premium watches
The latter half of the 1990s saw a fresh wave of entrants with a shift from Manufactures to
Pure Retailers.
For e.g. Food World, Subhiksha and Nilgiris in food and FMCG; Planet M and Music World in
music; Crossword and Fountainhead in books.
Post 1995 onwards saw an emergence of shopping centers,
o mainly in urban areas, with facilities like car parking
o targeted to provide a complete destination experience for all segments of society
Emergence of hyper and super markets trying to provide customer with 3 V’s - Value, Variety
and Volume
Expanding target consumer segment: The Sachet revolution - example of reaching to the
bottom of the pyramid.
At year end of 2000 the size of the Indian organized retail industry is estimated at Rs. 13,000
crore
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3. Retailing formats in India
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Malls:
The largest form of organized retailing today. Located mainly in metro cities,
in proximity to urban outskirts. Ranges from 60,000 sq ft to 7,00,000 sq ft and
above. They lend an ideal shopping experience with an amalgamation of
product, service and entertainment, all under a common roof.Examples
include Shoppers Stop, Piramyd, Pantaloon.
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Department Stores:
Departmental Stores are expected to take over the apparel business from
exclusive brand showrooms. Among these, the biggest success is K Raheja's
Shoppers Stop, which started in Mumbai and now has more than seven large
stores (over 30,000 sq. ft) across India and even has its own in store brand
for clothes called Stop!.
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Specialty Stores:
Chains such as the Bangalore based Kids Kemp, the Mumbai books retailer
Crossword, RPG's Music World and the Times Group's music chain Planet M,
are focusing on specific market segments and have established themselves
strongly in their sectors.
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Hypermarts/Supermarkets:
Large self service outlets, catering to varied shopper needs are termed as
Supermarkets. These are located in or near residential high streets. These
stores today contribute to 30% of all food & grocery organized retail sales.
Super Markets can further be classified in to mini supermarkets typically
1,000 sq ft to 2,000 sq ft and large supermarkets ranging from of 3,500 sq ft
to 5,000 sq ft. having a strong focus on food & grocery and personal sales.
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Discount Stores:
As the name suggests, discount stores or factory outlets, offer discounts on
the MRP through selling in bulk reaching economies of scale or excess stock
left over at the season. The product category can range from a variety of
perishable/ non perishable goods
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Convenience Stores:
These are relatively small stores 400-2,000 sq. feet located near residential
areas. They stock a limited range of high-turnover convenience products and
are usually open for extended periods during the day, seven days a week.
Prices are slightly higher due to the convenience premium.
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Department Stores:
Large stores ranging from 20000-50000 sq. ft, catering to a variety of
consumer needs. Further classified into localized departments such as
clothing, toys, home, groceries, etc.
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MBO’s :
Multi Brand outlets, also known as Category Killers, offer several brands
across a single product
category. These usually do well in busy market places and Metros.

4. Retailing formats in India
India’s number of Domestic grocery chains and Early Foreign Entrants

5. Recent Trends
Retail Sales in India
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Retailing in India is witnessing a huge
revamping exercise as can be seen in
the graph
India is rated the fifth most attractive
emerging retail market: a potential
goldmine.
Estimated to be US$ 200 billion, of
which organized retailing (i.e. modern
trade) makes up 3 percent or US$ 6.4
billion
As per a report by KPMG the annual
growth of department stores is
estimated at 24%
Ranked second in a Global Retail
Development Index of 30 developing
countries drawn up by AT Kearney.

6. Recent Trends contd.
Traditionally three factors have plagued
the retail industry:
Unorganized : Vast majority of the twelve million stores are
small "father and son" outlets
Fragmented : Mostly small individually owned businesses,
average size of outlet equals 50 s.q. ft. Though India has the
highest number of retail outlets per capita in the world, the
retail space per capita at 2 s.q. ft per person is amongst the
lowest.
Rural bias: Nearly two thirds of the stores are located in rural
areas. Rural retail industry has typically two forms: "Haats"
and “Melas". Haats are the weekly markets : serve groups of
10-50 villages and sell day-to-day necessities. Melas are
larger in size and more sophisticated in terms of the goods
sold (like TVs)
Recent changes:
Experimentation with formats: Retailing in India is still
evolving and the sector is witnessing a series of experiments
across the country with new formats being tested out. Ex.
Quasi-mall, sub-urban discount stores, Cash and carry etc.
Store design : Biggest challenge for organised retailing to
create a “customer-pull” environment that increases the
amount of impulse shopping. Research shows that the
chances of senses dictating sales are upto 10-15%. Retail
chains like MusicWorld, Baristas, Piramyd and Globus are
laying major emphasis & investing heavily in store design.
Emergence of discount stores: They are expected to
spearhead the organised retailing revolution. Stores trying to
emulate the model of Wal-Mart. Ex. Big Bazaar, Bombay
Bazaar, RPGs.
Unorganized retailing is getting organized: To meet the
challenges of organized retailing such as large cineplexes,
and malls, which are backed by the corporate house such as
'Ansals' and 'PVR‘ the unorganized sector is getting
organized. 25 stores in Delhi under the banner of Provision
mart are joining hands to combine monthly buying. Bombay
Bazaar and Efoodmart formed which are aggregations of
Kiranas.

7. Recent Trends contd.
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Multiple drivers leading to a consumption boom:
o Favorable demographics
o Growth in income
o Increasing population of women
o Raising aspirations : Value added goods sales
Food and apparel retailing key drivers of growth
Organized retailing in India has been largely an urban phenomenon with affluent classes and growing
number of double-income households.
More successful in cities in the south and west of India. Reasons range from differences in consumer
buying behavior to cost of real estate and taxation laws.
Rural markets emerging as a huge opportunity for retailers reflected in the share of the rural market
across most categories of consumption
o ITC is experimenting with retailing through its e-Choupal and Choupal Sagar – rural
hypermarkets.
o HLL is using its Project Shakti initiative – leveraging women self-help groups – to explore the
rural market.
o Mahamaza is leveraging technology and network marketing concepts to act as an aggregator
and serve the rural markets.
IT is a tool that has been used by retailers ranging from Amazon.com to eBay to radically change
buying behavior across the globe.
‘e-tailing’ slowly making its presence felt.
Companies using their own web portal or tie-sups with horizontal players like Rediff.com and
Indiatimes.com to offer products on the web.

8. Major Retailers
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India’s top retailers are largely
lifestyle, clothing and apparel
stores
This is followed by grocery
stores
Following the past trends and
business models in the west
retail giants such as
Pantaloon, Shoppers’ Stop
and Lifestyle are likely to
target metros and small cities
almost doubling their current
number of stores
These Walmart wannabes
have the economy of scale to
be low –medium cost retailers
pocketing narrow margin
Leading Retailers

9. India vs. World
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Indian retail is fragmented with over 12 million outlets operating in the country. This is in comparison to 0.9
million outlets in USA, catering to more than 13 times of the total retail market size as compared to India
India has the highest number of outlets per capita in the world - widely spread retail network but with the
lowest per capita retail space (@ 2 sq. ft. per person)
Annual turnover of Wal-Mart (Sales in 2001 were $219 billion) is higher than the size of Indian retail industry.
Almost 100 times more than the turnover of HLL (India's largest FMCG company).
Wal-Mart - over 4,800 stores (over 47 million square meters) where as none of India's large format store
(Shoppers' Stop, Westside, Lifestyle) can compare.
The sales per hour of $22 million are incomparable to any retailer in the world. Number of employees in WalMart are about 1.3 million where as the entire Indian retail industry employs about three million people.
One-day sales record at Wal-Mart (11/23/01) $1.25 billion - roughly two third of HLL's annual turnover.
Developed economies like the U.S. employ between 10 and 11 percent of their workforce in retailing (against
7 percent employed in India today).
60% of retailers in India feel that the multiple format approach will be successful here whereas in US 34 of the
fastest-growing 50 retailers have just one format
Inventory turns ratio: measures efficiency of operations. The U.S. retail sector has an average inventory turns
ratio of about 18. Many Indian retailers KPMG surveyed have inventory turns levels between 4 and 10.
Global best-practice retailers can achieve more than 95 percent availability of all SKUs on the retail shelves
(translating into a stock-out level of less than 5 %).The stock-out levels among Indian retailers surveyed
ranged from 5 to 15 percent.

10. Future direction: Positives
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AT Kearney has estimated India’s total retail market at US$ 202.6 billion which is expected to
grow at a compounded 30 per cent over the next five years.
With the organised retail segment growing at the rate of 25-30 per cent per annum, revenues from
the sector are expected to triple from the current US$ 7.7 billion to US$ 24 billion by 2010.
The share of modern retail is likely to grow from its current 2 per cent to 15-20 percent over the
next decade
Over next two years India will see several Indian retail businesses attaining a critical mass as
growth in the industry picks up momentum driven by two key factors:
o Availability of quality real estate and mall management practices
o Consumer preference for shopping in new environments
Wal-Mart : huge plans for India. Moving a senior official from its headquarters in Bentonville,
Arkansas, to head its market research and business development functions pertaining to its retail
plans in India.
New York-based high-end fashion retailer Saks Fifth Avenue has tied up with realty major DLF
Properties to set up shop in a mall in New Delhi.
Tommy Hilfiger, retailer of apparels, expects to open one store each in Delhi, Ahmedabad,
Lucknow and Bangalore in the next four months.

11. Future direction: Concerns
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68 million square feet of mall space is expected to be available by end of 2007, which might lead to
over-capacity of malls
Lack of differentiation among the malls that are coming up. One option may be to look at
specialization.
Poor inventory turns and stock availability measures - retailers clearly need to augment their
operations.
Operations of retailers and suppliers are not integrated. Efficient replenishment practices practiced in
the Indian auto and auto-component industry can be leveraged to implement efficient supply chain
management techniques.
Supplier maturity, in terms of adherence to delivery schedules and delivering the quantity ordered, is
an issue
Sales tax laws - lead to retailers having state-level procurement and storage leads to Indian retailers
having higher inventories. VAT has helped alleviate this a bit.
Increased adoption of IT and shrinkage management will be a critical area.
Supply chain and customer relations followed by merchandising, facilities management and vendor
development are areas which have significant gaps and proactive training is a key imperative for
overcoming these.

12. Retail Strategy
Research Prior :Demographic and Information on
Consumers
Retail Perspectives: Store Location ,Merchandising,
Pricing and Marketing/Selling
PEST Factors
Strategic Alternatives
1.Market Penetration : Increases the basket, Increase
the customers

13. Retail….
2.Market Expansion : New Segments, New
Customer Base (with existing formats)
3.Retail Format Development : New Format to
existing customers
4.Diversification :New Retail Formats to new
segment.

14. Retail Snapshots
Ebony(2003):
• Tapped Class B Cities : Shopping Experience (mailers,cable TV,
FM..) Discover the Joy of Shopping
• Salespeople Given Special Trg.( local language)
• Peak and Non peak hours
• Cheaper Products were displayed upfront,discounted price on
display.
• Carpet Rolling( sourcing, warehousing and logistic cost and had
12 week initial inventory)
• To be compete with Local Brands (Cheaper variants of National
Brand /ETC Label:21% of Total Sales)
• Local brands to open shop -in -shop

15. Reebok entry Strategies…
• Educate :Below the line activity (Benefits of
sneakers) approaching and advising
• Spend (Close to 50% of turnover) stand alone stores
• Entice( tom –tomming product benefits/slashing
price)
• Acclimatize
• Deliver (aspirational product ; women consumers )
• Avoid Excess : Go local strategy (sports slawar
kameez)
• 26%-43%; subsidiary of the year award .

16. Sources
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AT Kearny
Forrester Research 2006
KPMG-FICCI Report
http://www.indiainbusiness.nic.in/