The ANAROCK Group has appointed retail real estate veteran Pankaj Renjhen as COO & Joint Managing Director – ANAROCK Retail. With immediate effect, Renjhen shares the responsibility of overseeing the firm’s Indian retail operations with Anuj Kejriwal, MD & CEO – ANAROCK Retail
Before joining ANAROCK, Pankaj Renjhen was COO at Virtuous Retail, where he was responsible for operations, leasing, finance and accounts, marketing, human resources, legal and information technology functions for the firm. Prior to that, he served as Managing Director – Retail at International property consultants JLL, where he also served on the Asia Pacific Board of Retail.
“It is exciting to join many of my previous senior colleagues as we partner again to drive growth of ANAROCK’s dynamic retail vertical,” says Pankaj Renjhen. “My excellent long-standing equation with the group’s leadership and teams is a head-start. I look forward to working with them again. The tasks before us includes further building on ANAROCK’s capabilities to align with retail sector’s rapid journey from physical to digital and now phygital retailing.”
Anuj Puri, Chairman of ANAROCK Group, concurs, “Pankaj Renjhen joins us at a time when ANAROCK is actively harnessing the unique opportunities to strengthen our retail business in the post-pandemic market,” he says. “He will be instrumental in expanding our business scope and furthering our relationships with major Indian and international retailers as well as real estate owners, including Institutional investors. His appointment is in line with our established strategy of strengthening our leadership to remain agile, responsive, future-fit and adapt to the fast-changing retail market.”
Pankaj Renjhen brings to the table over 22 years of experience in advising leading corporates, retail and office occupiers, investors and developers across India on their real estate strategies. He holds PGDBM with specialization in Marketing and Finance from IMT, Ghaziabad and B.Com (Hons) from Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University.
“We are extremely bullish about the upcoming phase of retail recovery,” says Anuj Kejriwal. “As confirmed by our recent report in partnership with RAI, COVID-19 is likely to work as a catalyst for the growth of organised retail and e-commerce. In fact, organised retail’s market share is projected to grow from 9 percent in 2017 to 18 percent in 2021. With Pankaj Renjhen’s added leadership, ANAROCK Retail is now adequately equipped to harness the upswing in retail business. As we continue to expand our services portfolio, we have also added retail-specific city heads in Delhi-NCR and Kolkata.”
In the pre-COVID-19 era, the Indian retail industry was estimated to grow from US$ 0.79 trillion in 2017 to US$ 1.2 trillion by 2021. The market size of organised retail was approximately US$ 71.6 billion in 2017 and was expected to grow at a CAGR of 20-25 percent per year. E-commerce was expected to grow from US$ 24 billion in 2017 to US$ 84 billion in 2021. Within the realities of the post COVID-19 market, the industry’s growth has reduced but the share of organised retail and e-commerce will rise exponentially.
ANAROCK Retail has recently partnered with international retail design and delivery specialist Vindico to ensure the success of retail stores in the post-COVID-19 world. These services include the innovative, tech-driven construction and project delivery modalities which retail market now needs more than ever.
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