IndiaRetailBiz

A number of ‘modern retail brands,’ all of which are quite young in terms of either their launch or geographical spread, have begun catching imagination of Indian consumers. They have entered the prestigious listing under ’services’ category this year of the “Most Trusted Brands” list of the Economic Times.

In the next few years, when organised retail penetrates further into small cities and towns and becomes more visible to a large mass of consumers across nooks and corners of the country, it will begin to even influence their choice and perception of product brands.

Reliance ‘Fresh,’ the new kid on the block from Mukesh Ambani stable which made its entry barely 20 months ago from Hyderabad in November, 2006, despite facing a lot of controversies and opposition from political and trade lobbies has made to the services category list at No.13. Today, Reliance does its retail business across 12 formats, out of which the neighbourhood, convenience format of ‘Fresh’ could easily be considered as its flagship format. Reliance currently operates around 700 stores, under 14 distinct formats, across 60 cities and towns of the country. Reliance, needless to say, is the country’s largest business house with its owner Mukesh Ambani being among the wealthiest individuals in the world.

In shark contrast, at No. 22 on the list, is Subhiksha — the Chennai-based food, grocery, pharmacy and telecom chain, which despite being small in size with no-frills and no glitz has been able to win the trust of its consumers mainly on account of every day low prices strategy adopted by the chain.

Although founded 11 years ago in Chennai suburb with a single store in 1997 by a highly educated (IIT-IIMA), banker turned entrepreneur, R. Subramanian, the deep discount, value, retail chain could begin to spread its wings only a couple of years ago, when it received private equity funding to the the tune of 24% of its equity from ICICI Venture Capital. Currently, Subhiksha till the last count was operating 1,081 stores across 90 cities of the country. Subhiksha has now begun to expand beyond Delhi, UP, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu where its stores are currently located into West Bengal and Orissa. The retail chain is growing at a breakneck speed as it is now adding about a thousand stores every year.

‘Big Bazaar,’ the hypermarket chain, set up over a decade ago by the maverick, first generation, entrepreuner Kishore Biyani, has retained its old spot at No. 23 on the list.

Big Bazaar, though not the oldest, could truly be called as the harbinger of modern retail revolution to the masses of India. Today, with over 90 stores, across the country, it is difficult to miss a Big Bazaar hypermarket store in most of the tier-I and tier-II cities across the country. Buoyed by consumer confidence and response, Pantaloon Retail, the flagship company of the Future group which owns Big Bazaar chain, has decided to convert Big Bazaar into an independent entity. In the past few years, the group, has grown exponentially as can be seen from the fact that today it operates over 1,000 stores under several formats across 53 cities, occupies seven million sqft of space, and employees over 25,000 persons.

Fourth retailer on the service category list at No. 42, interestingly is hitherto one of the most unassuming retail chain Vishal Retail (Mega Mart), which despite its low profile and limited spread for almost two decades, has begun to begun to flex its muscles. Founded 22 years ago in 1986 by Ramchandra Agarwal as a humble garments shop in Kolkata, Vishal , today boasts of 108 stores across 73 cities in 20 states. Vishal has come into limelight only after a highly successful IPO in 2007, which catapulted the retailer into a big league. Today, besides garments it offers a variety of household products comprising 70,000=odd SKUs under different product categories.

While, we hope to bring further analysis of the consumers responses on various retailers, finding place on prestigious list, it is clear that there could not have been bigger contrast in terms of the retailers’ social, financial, and educational background, geographical beginnings, store formats, retail strategies in terms of products, prices, and discount offerings, and target consumers, than the one presented above.