Thirty years down the line and the one maxim that has remained unchanged and true is that Retail is Detail! From the carefully folded ledger sheets for entering the Debit and Credit ‘hisaab’ of the prosperous Marwari or the Gujarati businessman to the meticulously filed reams of gold and ornament inventory of the local ‘soni’ to the current world of SAP and AI programmes which control every aspect of how goods and services are bought, moved and sold, the fine eye is surely in the detail.
Buying and selling is no longer just an art. It has evolved into a science, replete with channel experiences, digitisation, mind-set shifts, start-up cultures, consumerism, all of which has to blend into that one elusive retail experience wooing, amongst others, the millennial generation of today.
So from what we were, to what we are, and where we want to be, it makes a lot of retail sense to have a futuristic look ahead for modern retail in India. A report recently released by PwC India talks about the socio-economic environment, the consumer buying pattern, the type of competition and the technology shifts which can be predicted for 2020.
Rakesh Biyani, Jt MD of Future Retail, notices a veritable shift from the B2B to the B2C segment thanks to the customer centric business shifts and the evolution of the smart phone capable of generating incredible amount of data both on the consumption and the supply side. The future is to be seen through the eye of the cell phone, where we have today, a totally wired and plug-and-play ready, ‘alpha customer’, no matter what age group he belongs to.
Let’s take a minute to understand what are the things that can be predicted? India as a country is evolving in three life phases. By 2020, India should add a population of the size of UK today. The country will be young in terms of its demographic dividend having nearly 65% of her population under the age of 35 years. Urbanizing of India will witness a rising population of women workforce thereby adding an aesthetic perspective to a brick and mortar business. But people will be time starved with nuclear families and working parents, increasing the need to outsource basic services of food, housekeeping, parenting and entertainment. The rise in population would bring about higher complexities of choice between brands, variants and point of sale talkers.
Human health would shape the future of retail which will have to limit the 67 million diabetic and 30 million obese populations in the country. Food health would determine the growing concerns around potential chemicals used during and post-harvest food production and storage. Organic farming would add a new dimension to how food will be consumed in the coming years.
Technology will finally be the greatest enabler with 2.5QB data being created every day. Artificial intelligence using deep learning and intuitive search will personalise the experiences in the virtual-physical-virtual world. The worlds will merge as one just as retail stores will develop blurring boundaries. Omni-channel, hyper-local or pure marketplace models would combine with brick and mortar stores to create a seamless shopping experience.
So how much is ‘detail’ you may ask? We have no answer. Only retail does!
