What strategies are corporates adopting to participate and grow in the retail segment?
Traditionally, retailing was more or less a small-scale neighbourhood business. However, in order to be competitive and profitable, players embarked on expansion programmes to improve efficiencies and derive benefits of scale to compete effectively. This has resulted in the emergence of regional organised players like Subhiksha, Trinethra, Viveks etc. Some of these players soon emerged as national players with presence across the nation. Organised retail is capital-intensive and a long-gestation business. Start-up investments along with real estate costs in some instances are prohibitive. Besides, this business also necessitates sizeable investments in strong procurement systems, warehousing infrastructure and IT infrastructure. But over a longer timeframe, after achieving break-even, scale determines profitability. However, first generation entrepreneurs naturally have limited resources and have to rely on partners to fund expansion or gravitate towards large established players throu
