The fall and fall of Indian Retail Industry

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The euphoria is over! The talks about “400 stores today and 4000 stores tomorrow” are over. Some of them are busy closing stores. Someare are busy cleaning the top brass. The folks who wrote “the rise and rise of Indian retail” are busy writing obituaries… the ones who want to make more money (there opportunity in every crisis!) are busy writing “the fall and fall of Indian retail”. Let me get this essay across before the best-selling books are back on the shelves! (I bought a book on retail that costed me Rs 1,000… that was the most expensive book that I bought in year 2008!)

This is essentially true for the grocery retail. The other retail formats like fashion are still able to sustain to some level.
Let me be more specific. It’s the so called “modern grocery retail” which is under trouble… the conventional grocery retail was always there (people were eating, are eating and will be eating!) and will continue to thrive – that’s my take. One might tend to hide behind the global economic phenomena but the fact is that the with or without the macro-economic happenings, the so called modern grocery retail was under trouble…

One of them - damn cheap incluing the electronics(!), I believe, was a ‘pyramid scheme’ – if you know what I mean. It was like a chit fund that depends on exponential growth of investments and/but are bound to fail. Certainly.
Others, who were more “systematic” in their approach, did not really focus on the Indian requirements. No one really tried the kaizen approach. I really appreciate the Bharti/Wal-Mart guys who have quietly opened a few stores in Punjab and are trying to get the right model out. This is very unlike the Wal-Mart approach in the US which is what others tried to copy!

In my view, the great Indian movement was bound to fail because no one really tried to get the model right. I dont really have the magic-pill here but I do have some views around some of the points of failure. Will cover the same in the next edition! Bye for now… See you soon…

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