To combat the increasing competition from modern retailers, a traders’ body, the subsidiary of Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), has announced that it will set up retail schools country wide to train an estimated around five crore small time retail traders in the country to boost their business.
According to an official press release, the body will open around 500 schools across the country in the next one year and the first one to be operational is expected to come up in Delhi by the end of this month.
Announcing this plan, Praveen Khandelwal, general secretary, CAIT, said, “The schools will seek to change the traditional outlook of the traders and educate them to adopt a contemporary approach in business to retain customers and increase profitability.”
“Our fight is not against the big names in the retail industry but to help the kirana stores to transform their business from traditional retail to modern format of retailing,” added Khandelwal.
Explaining the course structure, NK Pandey, chief executive, Retail School, said, “The programme is arranged in a very well-structured and customised manner keeping in mind the market demand and we have introduced subjects like visual merchandise, servicing customer, marketing and monitoring retail operations.”
