Indian retail market is projected to grow at 10% annually: Reliance Retail director Subramaniam V

The Indian retail market is one of the fastest growing in the world and is expected to reach USD 2 trillion by 2032, according to Reliance Retail Director Subramaniam V. The Indian retail market is estimated at USD 844 billion in 2022 with the unorganised retail market contributing around 87 per cent of the share, he said.

"The retail market is projected to grow at 10 per cent annually to reach a whopping 2 trillion by 2032 making it the fastest growing retail market of the world," Subramaniam said at an event organised by industry body FICCI here.

Talking about the unorganised retail segment, Subramaniam said it is highly fragmented and lacks modern-day infrastructure and technology due to smaller volume and financial resources.

Subramaniam said there is a need to build an operating environment which promotes inclusive and sustainable growth for the sector and government policies and business practices of the big players must support the inclusive growth of the small players of the unorganized players.

"There is a need to build a sourcing ecosystem that supports small producers and manufacturers (SMEs) to modernise their operations to produce high-quality products," he said.

Moreover, investments are also required for developing the supply-chain infrastructure in India by linking all major sourcing locations through a scalable warehousing and logistics ecosystem, in a bid to reduce sourcing time and help in the faster movement of goods.

Subramaniam said the sector is at the "cusp" of having Innovations in both physical and e-commerce through the use of new cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learnings.

"We are likely to see many more new cases aided by 5G in retail space," he added.

Highlighting the challenges faced by the retail industry such as licensing, Subramaniam said at present 10 to 70 licenses are required to open one retail store and suggested policy intervention in this space.

He suggested a "single license" for a business entity by the state government instead of multiple licenses.

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