Despite malls, it will be love all

GLITZY shopping malls may be the flavour of the season, but the retail industry thinks they will not hurt the country’s legion of mom and pop stores (read: kirana shops). If anything, the kiranas have silently shifted gears to the next level. And most top-end retailers believe that whether it’s supermarkets, convenience stores or friendly neighbourhood kiranas, no particular segment will gain at the cost of another.Reliance Retail is now keen to make these `mom and pop stores’ its business partners, despite the PMO calling for a study to assess the impact of large domestic and foreign retailers on the kiranawalas.
A section of the frontline retailers like the Future Group and Subhiksha feels that entry and expansion of retail chains is unlikely to throw smaller players out of business since there is enough opportunity for co-existence.There are several reasons why the medium-players are a success. Being closer to the customer than a modern retailer, they can easily gauge and almost instantly respond to changing customer needs. “While our salesmen are out on the field interacting with customers directly, the decision-makers who actually set the rules for operating these modern retail stores are at the back-end and, hence, far from reality,” Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani told ET.
By contrast, the small to mid-segment players handle the show themselves without delegating powers to an army of sales and service teams. “In fact, the Centre should understand the positive impact of modern retail as it ensures a better deal for consumers in terms of price as well as creates job opportunities. There may be some displacement of mid-segment players in catchment areas where a hypermarket comes up. But the space gets utilised for some other business since the kiranawala is usually the owner of the property,” said Subhiksha MD R Subramanian.
Elaborating, HyperCity Retail CEO Andrew Levermore said: “When modern retail in South Africa was growing, the mom and pop stores formed cooperatives for better margins bringing them at par with modern retailers. The kiranas can contemplate replicating this model in India.”
courtesy:economictimes
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