Growth of Retail

During past two of months many advertisements have been appearing in print and electronic media announcing inauguration of jewellery stores in and around Mumbai. Not less than four large establishments with multiple outlets have opened up at least ten new showrooms in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. There seems to be emergence of organized retail movement in jewellery business. These jewellers give lot of assurances like certifications, buyback, low making charges, insurance, life-time maintenance and what not to lure the customers. When I saw these advertisements, I started thinking about small standalone jewellers situated at every nuke and corner of the city. One may not find a pharmacy but will certainly find a jewellery  shop. Now the question comes up about the survival of these small jewellers. Will these small jewellers withstand the onslaught of organized retail stores? Will these small stores continue to do the business? Will their business practices (be it scrupulous or unscrupulous) continue? Will their business model need a change? Time will perhaps answer these questions aptly rather than my guesswork. The consumer needs are changing fast. The big banners, brands, spacious ultra-modern showrooms, cozy ambiance is the experience that consumer is willing to have. The rising prices of gold may be helping big banners as the consumers are likely to believe more in them than the ‘next corner jewellery shop’. I chanced to be in one such big showroom that offered me to check the purity of the gold ring that I had purchased from my old ‘next corner jewellery shop’.  I was hesitant to get the ring tested on modern machines (Karatmeter) for simple reasons. Suppose the ring fails the test for purity then I would have felt hurt for the cheating and would have suspected every gram of gold that I had bought in the past. It would have shattered the confidence that I had reposed not only in my ‘next corner jewellery shop’ but for all such shops. As luck would have it the ring failed the test. The gold that was claimed to be 22k was actually little over 19k. This of course shattered my decade old confidence in the ‘next corner jewellery stores’. With organized retail outlets coming up at frequent intervals and many persons like me switching the loyalty, I expected the ‘next corner jewellery shops’ to close down, but it was not so. I rather found many more ‘next corner jewellery shops’ coming up at a faster pace and doing good business. These shops also underwent few positive changes and those were welcome changes. May be these changes helped them to retain their customers and perhaps attract some new.

What surprised me when this organized sector was growing, was the absence of any protest from any corner to these large organized retail jewellery showrooms. It seems no one takes cognizance of this retail movement. No one ever talked of socialism, exploitation, attack on our culture (?), government favouring the rich, possible suicide by any jeweller or anything similar. Why this attitude is different from the attitude that is seen for single brand or multi brand retail stores. This attitude is not necessarily for FDI, but even for Indian establishments. Some players in retail withdrew their operations from UP, some dare not enter certain states or cities. If large chains in electronics, footwear, garments, healthcare, diagnostics etc. have expanded and raised the standards of service,  without a noteworthy negative impact on small standalone stores, then why only the grocery (agriculture produce) sector is being singled out? There are few simple reasons that one can easily understand for this attitude. Grocery is a large sector and every citizen is a consumer for this sector. Farmer is a very sensitive issue in our country. Agriculture is the largest private sector in our country that includes small and large, poor and rich farmers. This sector can be used for development or for politics. Unfortunately politicians effectively use this sector for their political objectives. So anything that is associated with a farmer or agriculture has a potential for politicians to launch the agitation. Most of the politicians are from agriculture sector and there is no other sector where one can find such a huge number of exploiting middlemen, mostly supported by politicians. The protests are more to protect the middleman rather than the farmers or producers. None other industry has such a stronghold of intermediaries. Then why would one bother if there is a growth of organized jewellery sector or electronics sector? Accept for leftist no one would ever object for FDI in these sectors. But when organized retail grocery and allied sectors threaten the supremacy of middlemen then the fire starts. Are these unscrupulous elements protesting against the growth of retail or FDI in retail, not responsible to stall the improvement of this sector?

We have protests in India for inward FDI only. There are no protests of the Indian companies who go in for takeovers, for M&A or set up green field projects overseas. Our protesters for inward FDI welcome outward FDI. The IT industry, steel and metal industry, auto industry, hospitality industry are spreading their wings. All those who in principle protest the growth should come forward and attack every sector that gets organized. Singling out agri products and shedding crocodile tears for the farmers will expose these sharks. The Indian consumers are getting smarter and the manipulators have to realize this fact. The politicians have to stop supporting the unscrupulous intermediaries before the citizens make them realize their evil plans. If India has to progress then we first have to say yes to the progress and work on that and it is for the consumers to do it. Indian consumers get the footwear to walk on dirty streets from air-conditioned showrooms and the same consumers get their vegetables from these dirty streets. Can this mindset change? Like a decent electronic or similar showroom, can we not have decent grocery and vegetable stores across the nation? We need to say YES to the progress.