The Retail industry is in the cusp of transformation and is undergoing fundamental change in the business environment characterized by disruption and unpredictability. The combined effect of demography and economic shifts in income along with the emergence of e-commerce is profoundly impacting the industry. The sector has adopted technology at a faster pace and scale than others - retail sector transactions are expected to account for more than a fifth of the total digital transactions in the country by 2020 - holding enormous potential to contribute toward the government’s movement to cashless transactions.
While the retailers—both offline and online—are adopting multitude of strategies towards understanding the buying behaviour of their customers, mapping them to products, the sector is marred a wide array of issues: Access to capital, land acquisition and rental costs, skilling to name a few. The absence of a single cohesive policy that governs all retail formats is creating pockets of imbalance amongst different retail formats. Therefore, an overarching retail policy that governs all retail format is one of the most significant challenges that needs urgent attention.
Enclosed is the soft version of the Services Newsletter covering the retail sector as the focus story.