The Indian government does not recognize retail as an industry. In India 98% of the retail sector consists of counter-stores and street-vendors.1 With no large players, inadequate infrastructure and a small affording population that believed in saving rather than spending, Indian retail never attracted the interest of large corporations. That was till they realized that retail in India is a USD 320 billion dollar industry, growing at CAGR 5% and contributing to 39% of the GDP..
It might seem almost nonsensical that this important sector of the country’s economy has been overlooked by corporate giants. One cannot blame them though. Indian retail has been a traditionally unorganized sector, dominated by counter-stores and street vendors
While retail employs a large sector of the population, most of these people are uneducated, unskilled individuals that regard retail as the preferred career alternative to agriculture. They never had the means nor will to develop the sector or expand their business. Retail never enjoyed the support of the Indian consumer. A miserly population that barely had the means to make end meet never treated shopping as a form of leisure. While individual retailers saw small gains, lack of infrastructure, an unattractive Indian consumer and absence of regulation never provided the scale that retail giants could capitalize on.
Meanwhile, the government preferred to look the other way while this unorganized retail sector provided a meager standard of living to millions in a country where poverty plagued the majority of the population. The unorganized retailers survived on thin margins and low volumes, while the corporate giants preferred to spend their resources in areas like power, industrials and telecom where the large-scale opportuni ...