How Retailing Industry Has Evolved

Indian retail industry has been constantly shifting over the years. From traditional retail stores or kirana stores, it has changed into huge brick-and-mortar stores and then, digitalised wholly. Even, consumers' experience and expectations are changing as the time passes by. This gave rise to the value chain that was formalised.

According to a report by Nasscom, modern retail evolved with emergence of hyper-marts, supermarts, and cash and carry stores formats, coupled with geographical expansion from Metros to Tier 1 cities. The key consideration for consumer transitioned from premium shopping experience to convenience; and technology accelerated the modernization in operations (backend). Players started leveraging technology for information dissemination through websites.

More players entered into the retail industry, in turn, shaking the entire realm. As per the report, the modern phase marked a rapid growth phase, and an increased realization by all retail participants of the need to embrace digital technologies in order to remain relevant to an increasingly digital consumer. Personalisation became the key consideration for customer, and retail growth story started moving beyond top 500 cities.

With the amalgamation of technology and retail, remarkable changes have been witnessed which are as follows: 

1- Supply chain integration to access 100 per cent of the country’s pin codes. This has led to higher consumer discretionary spend with access to a more diversified consumption basket 

2- Mom-n-Pop shops becoming offline and online sellers. Owing to which, over 800,000 local sellers started selling on online platforms for wider reach, realizing 2-8 times topline growth at low costs 

3- Organizing the exports market that will bring global-scale production quality with exports to 180 countries and around 200 million international buyers 

4- the industry has also given immense support to the Indian government’s initiatives that has been established to induce retailing industry

5- A surge in infusions has been noticed that increased the entire digital infrastructure of the country 

6- Increase in infusions led to emergence of various jobs and in turn, increase digital skilling for the future 

7- It has given a thrust to the Indian artisans and given them a space in the global markets 

8- Startups in the country also got a boost as they can now build cutting edge retail tech solutions