Retail sector in India

In the sphere of today's scenario, the world has become flat so everything has been globalized from education to trade as the playing field has been leveled. Same scenario can be seen in Indian retail sector as well. The concept of retail is not new in India. Previously we had small forms of retail sector like haat bazars and kirana stores. Today these two still exist but we have organized retail market as well since these two come under unorganized retail market. Today approx. 3-4% is organized and is growing at the rate of 25-30% per annum.
The players of retail market are coming up with new models of retail stores like speciality stores, malls, discount stores, factory outlets, departmental stores, hypermarkets and supermarkets, convenience tores, multibrand outlets etc. That's why India has been rated as 5th most emerging retail market and has been ranked 2nd in a global retail development index of 30 developing countries drawn by AT Kearney.
There are multiple drivers leading to this consumption boom of retail sector like favorable demographics, growth in income of middle class at the rate of 10% per annum and raising aspirations of young India for value added good sales.
ITC is experimenting with retailing through its e-chaupaal & chaupaal sagar for rural hypermarkets. HLL is using its project Shakti for leveraging women self help groups to explore rural market. Mahamaza is leveraging technology & network marketing concepts to act as an aggregator & serve the rural markets. IT has been proved as a tool for plyers like Amazon.com & eeBay as they are leveraging new concept of e-tailing. Companies are tying up with horizontal players like rediff.com & Indiatimes.com. Sachet revolution is reaching to the bottom of pyramid as it has been recognized as the most powerful tool to penetrate the rural market of India. Today retail sector is contributing to approx. 13-14% of net GDP & 8-10% Indian population is employed in retail sector.
As we switch to retail agriculture now India has come up with APMC Act, 2008, which includes 14 states allowing farmers to sell their produce directly to the buyers offering them the best price. Reliance retail has linked with 100 acres of farms in Punjab, WB & Maharashtra with $5.6 billion. Pepsico bought 4 million orange trees in Punjab for Tropicana juice. There has been mergers in retail industry like between Wal-Mart & Bharti, Pantaloons & Starbucks, Lee Cooper & Reliance & Bata.
But there has been some weak points also regarding retail sector like it may give rise to inflation then Indian money is going out so there willbe deterioration in value of money & there has also been a big question mark whether Wal-Mart will succeed in India or not as it has always followed the model of opening its stores at the outskirts of city but in India it is in confusion. Wal-Mart was thus been thrown out of Germany as money there was going out since people there were interested in buying its low priced items. But inspite of all these factors retail industry is considered as sunrise industry in India & it will be interesting to watch this boom.