ISAS Working Papers

The time has come for Indian retailing. The signals are there all over. The newspapers, business press, the governments, the Chief Executive Officers of large corporations, all talk about it day in day out. The Indian economy is likely to continue its steady growth with enhanced share in global trade and steady agricultural outputs. Booming employment opportunities, rising urban disposable income and credit card ownerships, changing lifestyles and demographic profiles all are showing a favorable skew towards a rising consumerism culture, boding well for retailing growth. Consumer spending is clearly set to accelerate its pace. Demographics continued to show a positive skew to spur retailing growth. Consumers groups aged between 20-45 years are emerging as the fastest growing consumer group and the mean age of Indians is now pegged at 27, a mean age that reinforces spending across all the retailing channels of grocery, non-grocery and non-store. India's burgeoning middle class will drive up nominal retail sales through 2010 by 10 percent per annum. At the same time, organised retail is becoming more important. At present organized retail accounts for a mere 3 percent of the total; by 2010 this share will already have reached 10 percent. Thus most of India's growth in retail is in the future, not the past.