The 11th season of the India Retail Forum is being held in Renaissance Hotel Mumbai from September 17 to 18. Apart from insightful panel discussion, the event also witnessed the launch of SupeMarketwala authored by one of the delegates Damodar Mall. This followed by panel discussion on ‘seizing the moment for powering the next wave of growth in food and grocery retail’.
The moderator of the session Sadashiv Nayak CEO, Future Retail introduced the delegates, Louis-Michel Barbotin, President, Smart World Shopper (France), Damodar Mall, CEO, Value Retail, Reliance Retail, Mohit Kampani, CEO, Spencers Retail, Srinivas Kamath, Director, Natural’s Ice Cream, Karan Mehrotra, Co-Founder & CEO, LocalBanya.com, Sumanta Datta, Vice President – CBO Operations & Customer Leadership, The Coca-Cola Company, et al, and citied the example with the varieties of community foods, Sandesh fellas and etc.
Moderator, Sadashiv Nayak asked the views of future of retailing in India. Mohit Kampani shared that retailing is going to be omnipresent. Social Values will change and people will think it is alright not to cook at the house. Proliferation of newer channels will come into effect. Damoder Mall added that taste preferences and food would be bought out. Stores will also make readymade food.
The next question was delagates views on India’s hypermarket stores. Louis Martin Barbotin showed pessimism on the statement and said that he doesn’t think there is a wider future of the hypermarket story as has happened in many other countries. However he stated that no format has disappeared in the last 150 years, and that consumers consumption had grown.
Srinivas Kamath also added about ice cream as an offering has been more acceptable and if the hypermarket story has to survive, then acceptance level of food and other product offering has to increase manifold.
Next discussion was on reverse trend taking place where small scale stores setting a trend for the large sized store. Karan Mehrotra replied in affirmative and stated that larger stores have to be more adaptive and that the trust cannot be valued based on the store any more. MohitKampani ushered the very fact that larger retail stores needs to be more research based for more unique product to come up.
The experts also shared their views on how generic retailing make a transition to modern retailing. Sumonto Dutta clarified that it has to be an industry based phenomenon. If consumers do not like a jackfruit, he has to be offered a jackfruit flavoured ice cream in a successful way. People hardly store beverages in their homes, and this mind set needs to be changed among the consumers.
