TheRodinhoods

Who will kill the local kirana shop in Metros – Online retailers or Big departmental stores ??

Rochak Sharma

Today one of my friends called me for brainstorming session, Topic is what business to start next in retail? We dwelled into serious 3-4 hours of discussion and we concluded that in India now for tier 1 cities, following trends are being observed

  1. The real estate cost is becoming more and more prohibitive and cost are increasing

  2. Aggressive marketing from online retailers is making people aware and driving adoption

  3. Online retailers are better priced and providing great discounts and service

  4. Finding Skilled manpower is becoming more challenging

  5. Jobs being created today does not use to exist 5 years back

See the e-commerce journey in last 15 years.

  1. Phase 1 was specialized online retailers Flowers & Gifts

  2. Phase 2 was Online banking  & Payments

  3. Phase 3 was online boking  – Travel, Movie & Books

  4. Phase 4 was birth of social media

  5. Current Phase 5 is Online retailers with all type of options (tell me one thing which you can’t buy online today?)

So very clearly two things are happening, One – best low cost model available is online retailing and second – adoption of online purchase in increasing week by week.

So what future potentially will look like – People will adopt and order everything very conveniently online (where choice is not much of a issue) e.g. Toiletries, Food items, Groceries, Tickets, flowers, Books, Vegetables, Furniture, Electronics etc.

This all will lead to online retailers killing the local kirana shop and big departmental stores….so coming to the big question – what business to start? Conclusion was

We might be totally wrong – but it was a very interesting discussion and conclusion and thought of sharing with everyone and will love to know your thoughts!!

Also as I like not to popularize myself too much – here I am with my rodinhood tee 🙂