SCOPE OF RETAIL IN INDIA

I returned to India from UAE after three years and joined my parents in Mumbai. Mumbai is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the financial capital of India. When I came to know Marks and Spencer is starting its operations out here through one of its franchisees from Jakarta I joined the group for store operations in Mumbai. PT Mitra group was a well known group in Jakarta and was the main partner for the Indian operations of Marks & Spencer in India, through their organisation named Planet Sports, in the late nineties. Allan Thomson, the business development manager, South Asia Pacific region, from Marks & Spencer was heading this project. With the help of his team from Jakarta we successfully opened the first store of Marks & Spencer in India at the scintillating ‘Crossroads’, a happening mall those days in south of Mumbai. It was a small ten thousand odd square feet store and consisted of men, ladies, toiletries and lingerie departments. All the staffs working here were fresher and had no previous experience of retailing. We all underwent exclusive one week training on customer service skills and communication skills conducted by the employees of Marks & Spencer- UK. It was a good learning for all the employees. The team was very eager and excited to work for such a well known and established international brand. As we had to start our operations from scratch we had to identify a warehouse to station all the container of stocks coming from abroad. From our team as only I had the experience of handling warehouse activities and setting up the warehouse, I took up this challenge. We identified one warehouse at MIDC area in Navi Mumbai, an extension of Mumbai. All the goods were shipped and were docked at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. To release the goods from here was a major task, and this is where I learnt the street smart skills one needs to have to face odd challenges. Most of the days I could not go home as we had to release goods at odd times as the containers used to arrive at odd times. It was also risky to leave the goods at the dock for a longer duration to avoid pilfering activities. I also had to monitor the store warehouse opening and closing activities at the same time. As I was not well versed with the statutory norms required for handling any business I was finding it a bit tough those days, and to add to it the absence of any processes.

Finally we opened the store for trading successfully with a soft launch. Its only after working here that I realised how different and difficult it is to operate a store in India, mainly for two reasons, one because of the ignorance of this concept of retailing and the other because of the lack of systems and processes involved in it. It was here that I realised that just having an exposure of international experience in retailing won’t help me to operate a store smoothly, and hence I had to unlearn my self, and learn retailing the Indian way. Pantaloons store was situated just opposite to our store. It was a complete Indian departmental store. This is where I decided if I need to succeed in India in this industry I need to join one such store.
In the year 2002 I joined Pantaloons Retail (I) Ltd., now Future Group. It was here that I learnt retailing the Indian way. My role model was Kishore Biyani, who was a true inspiration for me. During my five years with Pantaloons I got to learn the core aspects in retailing. Through this book I wish to share all that I have learnt and experienced in store operations. Most of my time I have spent in Big Bazaar situated in Lower Parel in Mumbai and was mostly exposed to apparels. Hence you will come across incidents and cases related to such a scenario. Through this book I just want to spread as to how retail store operations work but this is in no way to communicate that this is the only best way to run store operations.

According to me store operations is the happening place in a retail industry and this is the only place which will make a person an all rounder in the industry. It is here where I learnt, that to become a perfect store manager, you need to have hand-on experience in all the departments, starting from the warehouse. Hence whenever any new recruit used to join us, be it a management trainee, or a sales advisor we used to start their training at the warehouse. But it is not the same here in India, which I feel is a disadvantage. Most of the new recruits, who pass out from the B- schools and join the organisation as management trainees in store operations feel working in a warehouse, is not their cup of tea as they carry the tag of MBA along with them. This it-self is the first sign of failure. Hence mainly because of this reason most of them are not a successful store manager. Most of the stores which are doing great numbers are not because of the existing managers’ contribution, but because of the high rise in consuming power of the existing population. If you have shopped in such stores you will notice that there is still chaos within such stores and still most customers are not satisfied with the working of the store. The store manager will mostly be seen in a reactive mode and doing mostly fire fighting activities, rather than being in a proactive mode. There are two major reasons for the same, one being dearth of trained store managers and inhibition to learn from their mistakes and the second not understanding the importance of processes and application of the same within the stores. It is very crucial to set processes in place to operate a store very efficiently. Lot of scope is available to improve the operations of the store. I strongly believe that all management trainees who have joined the operations team dreaming to become store managers need to compulsorily start to get trained from scratch in store operations and understand each and every process, only then will he be able to run a store successfully.

I still remember how people used to look at me in the early nineties when I used to tell them that I am working in a retail store. They used to compare me with one of those salesmen working at a small shop situated at every lane in the town. Most of them are not clear as to what exactly this industry is all about. There is a wrong notion, especially in the rural areas about retail shops. One here feels people working in this industry are no one but the common kiranawala working at the neighbourhood kirana store. But it is gradually getting its importance and people have started accepting it as another career prospect. Retail is the code word on every individual tongue. Every second individual is talking about the retail industry. It has started growing rapidly since past five years. It generates more than ten percent (10%) of India’s GDP, and around eight percent (8%) of the employment. Organised retailing is gradually developing and due to this there is a great demand of skilled people in this industry. But as this industry was not so much in demand five to seven years back there is a tremendous shortage of skilled people to run the business, especially store operations. Due to this many institutes have started launching courses in retail management so as to develop skilled manpower and provide to the industry people with skill to run the business. But even now most of the institutes are finding it difficult to provide the full knowledge required to run the business, especially in store operations, reason being lack of exposure to this industry. Need is now to provide specific detail knowledge on every aspect in retailing such as, store operations, visual merchandising, merchandise buying, function of human resource in retail, logistics, retail marketing, retail finance and so onetc.