Indian Retail Scenario

chillibreeze writer — Shalini Bahadur

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Retail in India is still at a very early stage. Most retail firms are companies from other industries that are now entering the retail sector on account of its amazing potential. There are only a handful of companies with a retail background. One such company is Nilgiri’s from Bangalore that started as a dairy and incorporated other areas in its business with great success. Their achievement has led to the arrival of numerous other players, most with the backing of large groups, but usually not with a retail background. Most new entrants to the India retail scene are real estate groups who see their access to and knowledge of land, location and construction as prime factors for entering the market.

New retail stores have traditionally started operations in cities like Mumbai and Delhi where there has been an existing base of metropolitan consumers with ready cash and global tastes. The new perspective to this trend is that new entrants to the retail scenario should first enter smaller cities rather than focusing entirely on the metro’s. Spending power in India is not concentrated any more in just the 4 metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata). Smaller but upcoming cities like Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Trivandrum, Cochin, Ludhiana, Simla etc will fast be catching up to the metro’s in their spending capacity.

Cities in south India have taken to the supermarket style of shopping very eagerly and so far the maximum number of organized grocery and department stores are in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The north has a long way to go to come up to par. International stores now prefer to gauge the reaction of the public in these cities before investing heavily in a nation-wide expansion. Milou, the Swiss children’s wear retailer, recently opened up its first store in Chennai, bypassing Delhi and Mumbai.

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Besides the urban market, India’s rural market has just started to be seen as a viable option and companies who understand what the rural consumer wants will grow to incredible heights. The bulk of India’s population still live in rural areas and to be able to cater specifically to them will mean generating tremendous amounts of business.
Business, specifically retail business must focus on the most important factor in the Indian mind-set----Value for Money. Indian consumers are ready to pay almost any amount of money for a product or service as long as they feel they are getting good Value for Money. This is often misconstrued as being tight fisted or interested in lower priced and/or lower quality products.

In the past decade, international companies entering India (Levi’s, Pepe, Tommy Hilfiger, Marks and Spencer, Mango) have generally offered moderately priced to expensive items. They have aimed for the upper-middle and rich classes of Indian society. These are consumers who travel abroad often and can buy these items overseas quite easily. Instead, international companies should be focusing on the lower and lower-middle classes of India. This is where the real potential is, the aspirational class of consumers who want to lead a better lives and believe in education, hard work and absorb knowledge from every possible angle. The phenomenal success of Big Bazaar, Pantaloons version of Wal-Mart, is proof that there is enormous potential in providing products and services to this class of consumers.

Indians are very curious by nature and will try everything at least once before rejecting it. The initial success of KFC in India proved that Indians could make a success of most new ventures entering India but reject a concept once they have tried and tested the offering and found nothing worth going back for. The menu at KFC was rather boring and insipid to the Indian consumer who is used to the innumerable combinations and permutations of street food. For their second run in India, KFC re-thought its menu and has been very successful marketing at specific groups within India, like the Punjabi’s who have quite a history of loving the Chicken leg and have made the Chandigarh outlet a huge success!

A company entering India cannot have just one game plan to apply to the entire country as the people, their tastes, the lifestyle, the budgets etc are all too divergent. International entrants must enter each market specifically focusing only on that area to be successful.

Metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata

Second rung but will soon outpace metros: Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon, Pune, Baroda

Small and developing fast: Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Faridabad, Ludhiana, Cochin, Simla, Mysore

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—About our writer:

Shalini says, "An eternal student, I love learning anything new. I'm addicted to reading, word games, puzzles, traveling and researching trends. Bliss to me is to curl up on the couch with a good book/good site and a cup of cocoa. Currently working as an assistant manager in Retail Operations with a Children's wear retail chain called Gini and Jony. She is an NRI with a BSc degree in Clothing and Textiles from Kansas State University and worked with JCPenney and K-Mart before deciding to return to India."

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