Comments on: India’s Retail Revolution: Question 1

By: DHANANJOY DATTA

DHANANJOY DATTA — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:00:14 +0000

Dear Sir,

I need all the statistical data related to the inidan retail business & name of the site from where i will be able to collect the data.

Regards,

Dhananjoy Datta.

By: sreeram

sreeram — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:09:43 +0000

there are a plethora of scopes available in retail and management industry
with hundreds of retail otlets across the country an many more opening its all sunshine in this industry
infact a lot of B schools have initiated the management programmes under retail and management

By: sneha

sneha — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 05:24:28 +0000

what’s the career scop in retail industry

By: Things they do in a civilized society

Things they do in a civilized society — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:22:00 +0000

[...] nearly a decade are suddenly termed illegal, because reliance needs profits. There are a hell lot of people who think reliance retail is a bright idea, the argument being the state should not [...]

By: Sharmila

Sharmila — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:59:18 +0000

As a consumer, every day I have to pick my way through muddy wet pathways, rotting garbage, cow-dung and hordes of shoppers to haggle at individual stalls for vegetables or meat, whose quality and hygiene is highly suspect, with rude shopkeepers who increasingly do not seem to be concerned if I take my business to the next thelawallah. Oh for some proper organised retail stores! Probably the thelawallahs themselves may wish to find themselves in a nice clean organised selling environment, such as wet markets in South East Asian regions. Plastic sheets on the roadside can surely be transformed into covered pucca stands where the same individual sellers can do business with more value addition and less harassment from local police and goons.

By: HmmBut

HmmBut — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:22:15 +0000

Prashant, I hope you will let out discuss slightly outside the framework of your question. Some of us have related concerns. It is good that Shyam has brought them up.

The real question is how many of these jobs are direct jobs? How many are new? How many jobs were lost? How many net direct jobs were created (or lost)? How many net indirect jobs were created (or lost)? Data is very hard to come by in India. Even the private sector studies make huge assumptions and their data is of much poorer quality than the one used in the West.

Others like ST and anshul have raised serious and relevant concerns. I will just add that one shouldn’t only go by the statistics provided by the organized retailers themselves and thos who are trying to consult to them. We need independent studies to balance them.

Another aspect is should we encourage entrepreneurship or get everyone to become a salaryman? India does have a high entrepreneurial culture but it is out of necessity. What we are talking about are the poor building up small businesses to earn the bare minimum. This has been borne out in several studies. From these entrepreneurs should rise new successes. If we discourage it at the very beginning, we are going to lose some precious talent.

We are trying to make a leap. Instead of an Indian Sam Walton rising from the mofussil town of Sholapur, we will have the established elite taking over a whole industry. People will try their best to survive and if they can’t they will riot. We are definitely going to huge disruptive social changes.

Also, let us not be under the illusion that these corporations that aspire to build vertical monopolies are going to fairer to the farmers than the middlemen who themselves seem to have become the bogeymen in this debate.

Is there any Parliament study group on this like Congressional Studies in the US? I hope there are. The US came to this point through an organic growth process. We could also take the same path but do it faster as we already have examples of past successes. What concerns me is that we are trying to make a leap and cut out millions of people. Let us see the result of this experiment.

By: Prashant

Prashant — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:06:34 +0000

Shyam Thambi (aka ST)

Tried to respond to your comments but they left me confused. We’d like your comments to continue but please respond to the contents in the post, specifically.

BTW, I would recommend you read the other posts related to retail in this site. They address whatever concerns you have raised

By: anshul

anshul — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:55:01 +0000

well numbers quoted are really debatable. even if reliance opens 500 stores - 1000 people per store is a big number. maybe they are counting indirect job creation but then many of these guys are already employed it is not new employment. e.g. son of a corner kirnan shop owner who will normally take care of shop will now go to work with this retail store. but there are qualitative differences

1. concentration of wealth - even if same no of people are employed money now goes to big companies which would have gone to all these small guys in earlier scenario
2. point about economy becoming organized is well taken
3. more importantly it forces complete supply chain to be efficient and removes inefiicient middleman. role of government become more important here and it need to act as watchdog while protecting interests of consumer, farmer and marketer. the key will lie in deciding pecking order of these competing interests

By: ST

ST — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:19:45 +0000

I happened to read somewhere last night, the Retail MNCs entered in Thailand and the small businesses there started collapsing, as one might expect. The government then changed the clauses and restrained their further expansion.
With this experience, the retail giants have been successful in manipulating indian law makers to practically make their entry irreversible.
I was talking to a local shop in my town which is a manufacturer outlet of the best kitchen crockery in the world. I asked them why doesn’t walmart carry this? They said walmart tries to squeeze us so much that we cant afford to sell it to them. Walmart is very wellknown for this, no doubt it benefits me as a consumer.
I was also looking at some stats, what % does farmer get out of total produce export price, it was less 5%, in some cases 10% (developing/poor countries exporting to Europe).
For consumer goods and others this sounds not so bad, one has to loose when many are in win situation. But for foodgrains for farmers, I dont know if I can argue that !

Cheers !

By: Unknown Indian

Unknown Indian — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:08:50 +0000

Organized retail clearly will lead to a mix of winners and losers.

The winners would be:
- the urban consumer - better choice, a better shopping experience and lower prices.
- the farmer - a larger share of end product prices
- the semi educated urban poor - who get higher quality jobs (the numbers will depend on the penetration of organized retail)
- the economy as a whole - less wastage - a McKinsey study had shown that 75% of fruits and vegetables are wasted between the farm and the plate in the current supply chain -further, there will be a temporary boost in jobs in construction as the malls and organized retail formats are rolled out

The losers will be:
- Middlemen who are unwilling to adapt - but these are the same @sshls who do not pay taxes, adulterate foods and rip off consumers at every opportunity
- Uneducated, illiterate vendors who cannot shift to working in an organized retail environment