Yet another year has gone by and from many perspectives, it has been a memorable milestone in Indian history. Positive sentiment which was kicked off early in the year became firmed and translated into shoppers feeling confident enough to open up their wallets and spend freely.
From a purely Retail segment perspective, the big bang caused by online Retail cannot be forgotten easily. Whether it is the high decibel presence in media, the unbelievable sums of funding that seem to be flowing in from a bottomless well or for the matter the shopper angst when they could not buy or ended up getting bricks instead of the mobiles they had purchased.
There is a dialogue in the Tamil film Padayappa where Rajnikanth says to his nemesis – “You won once and it was good for me; I woke up“
I guess this is a very apt summary of the year gone by for Indian Retail which has been concerned about losing out to chain stores who are worried about losing out to Ecommerce and the shoppers who feel that they are at the losing end.
However, in the process physical stores have woken up to the potential as also the competition from online. Ecommerce has woken up to the reality that Retail is not about high decibel advertising only and required on the ground execution. And finally, shoppers have woken up to the potential as also the downsides of deals which sound too good to be true.
The government now needs to wake up and grant industry status to Retail.
So, what else can we expect in 2015?
The year ahead will be one of D&C; Disruption and Consolidation for Indian Retail. Click here to read more about this.
