Re-Engineering Retail in India - Trends for 2019

 What should be the agenda for Retailers in India for 2019? 

There are two major trends for 2019 - 

1. ‘Hybrid’ retail – a network of fusion online-offline retail stores. Low-cost retail outlets – no inventory stores. Build accessible points for the population not in radar – expand the radar range. 

2. 'Customer Experience' – two categories of products – first - ‘low involvement’ category like grocery, FMCG, daily needs – here experience is secondary and speed to deliver the product is primary. The second – ‘high involvement’ category - products from fashion, lifestyle, tech, etc. where buying experience plays a key role. The Retailers need to constantly adapt technologies to deliver a better buying experience.  From Frogdesign.

 Happy Retailing 2019!!

Re-Engineer Retail in India

  

Kiraanas or Mom & Pop stores are the king of retail in India as it commands a maximum chunk (90% of the retail) of USD ~680 bn retail market in India. Modern retail and eCommerce are finding very hard to pierce into their territory. 

Big Retailers like Future Group, Reliance Retail / Jio, D-Mart should collaborate and engage, educate, empower and enable these millions of Kiraana & Mom & Pop stores and make them part of mainstream retail by providing them virtual inventory from their strong supply chain. They should build a strategy and process (adoption of technology) to collaborate these Kiraana and Mom & Pop stores and not have a strategy to compete with them. 

Extensive research for setting up the right processes - order procurement, processing, and fulfillment, has been done.  For more details about this research and data, you can drop a message to me.  Shall be happy to guide.

In future, retail will not be segregated into modern, online (e-commerce), offline (Kiraana, Mom & Pop)  but will be analyzed as to how effectively the combination of a good supply chain and customer services, be used to deliver the best shopping experience to consumers in this highly connected world.  The future of retail is where technology (internet) changes the way customer buys and benefits.

Generally, customer experience at Kiraanas, Mom & Pop stores (estimated appx. 1.50 cr in India) is unmatched – neighborhood store, relationship for years, order on phone, home delivery in few minutes at no extra cost,  running ledger/credit diary, weekly/monthly account settlement etc.  However, Kiraana stores have a very ‘weak’ supply chain.  And are looking for strong supply chain support.  They would tie-up whosoever offer them the solution, first.  

Modern Retailers’ supply chain is far stronger than any of the big online retailers (marketplaces). They should collaborate and make these Kiraana as their Retail (POS) points, with the application of efficient process and technology.  

The mantra is – create strategy to collaborate, not compete with small Kiraana and Mom & Pop retailers and leverage strengths for mutual benefit.