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India retail set to hit Rs 200 trillion by 2035, says BCG-RAI report
AI-led transformation and sharp focus segments key to capturing the massive prize.
MUMBAI: India’s retail tills are ringing louder than ever and they’re about to get a whole lot busier. At the Retail Leadership Summit 2026, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Retailers Association of India (RAI) unveiled their joint report, Winning Codes for Retail 2035: Capturing the Rs 200 Trillion Prize, painting a picture of a sector on steroids, turbocharged by consumption, digital leaps and artificial intelligence.
India remains one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, clocking 8 per cent GDP growth in 2025 and on course to become the third-largest economy globally by 2030. Private consumption especially in discretionary items and services is the rocket fuel, set to balloon the Indian retail market to nearly Rs 200 trillion over the next decade.
The report doesn’t sugar-coat the challenge, organised retail’s historic outperformance over category growth has narrowed, particularly in offline channels. Translation? The easy wins are drying up, and retailers must get sharper or get left behind.
The winning playbook boils down to three big moves:
Pick your tribe and stick to it Top performers zero in on a clearly defined target segment, make bold trade-offs, and align every decision to deliver a distinct, profitable customer value proposition.
Reinvent the shopping journey Agentic commerce powered by generative AI has already left the lab and entered reality. In urban US markets, nearly 42 per cent of consumers have used GenAI for research and purchases. India’s digital adoption curve is even steeper, so expect AI to reshape discovery, evaluation and buying – especially among Gen Z urban shoppers.
Go all-in on AI, end-to-end Isolated AI pilots deliver 10–15 per cent gains, a full functional transformation across merchandising, supply chain, marketing and service can unlock 40–60 per cent improvements in speed, quality and cost.
BCG’s Abheek Singhi captured the mood, “India’s retail story is an inspiring story, the sector is poised to expand into a nearly Rs 200 trillion opportunity over the next decade… The winners of the future will have sharp differentiated value proposition, at scale use of AI and technology and excellent execution.”
His colleague Bharat Mimani doubled down, “Retail is entering a decisive new phase where AI is no longer a peripheral experiment but a core driver of competitive advantage… Retailers that adopt an end-to-end AI-led functional transformation approach can unlock 40–60 per cent performance gains, far exceeding the incremental impact of isolated use cases.”
RAI leaders echoed the urgency, success in the next decade won’t come from sales growth alone. It will reward retailers who treat transformation as a discipline, rebuild talent and operating models, and deliver consistent trust across channels and price points.
In short, the Rs 200 trillion retail pie is baking fast but only those who combine laser focus, fearless trade-offs and AI as a full organisational overhaul will get the biggest slice. The rest? They might just be left browsing the aisles of yesterday.
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IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
