e-commerce
Future of retail in the age of e-commercialisation
The India retail industry accounts for over 10 per cent of the country’s GDP and contributes to around eight per cent of the employment. This space is undergoing transformations due to scores of e-commerce firms gaining huge popularity. In such a scenario, it is the brick and mortar companies that are gradually feeling the heat waves of the rising competition level in the Indian market. The truth is, the future of Indian retail holds value both in offline and online retail, especially in impulse categories like fashion jewellery and accessories.
Over the last decade, the Indian retail industry has grown phenomenally with a remarkable shift towards organised retailing formats. It is gradually shifting towards a modern concept of retailing, which is a seamless blend of online and offline formats. This concept is called ‘Omni-Channel’ retailing, which focusses on employing all kinds of shopping channels like internet, brick and mortar, television, direct mail and radio among many others. Merging the two formats of online and offline retailing is to blend technology with smart merchandising and imbibe community building, customer engagement and targeted marketing in their operations. For instance, to tackle the queue problem at its stores, customers have the option of shopping online and opting for home delivery or store pick up at WalMart. Customer friendly tactics such as this have helped WalMart to be counted among the top five online retailers in the US with estimated revenues of $10 billion in 2013 from the online segment alone.
It is predicted that the Indian retail market will grow by seven per cent over the next 10 years, eventually becoming a whopping $850 billion industry by 2020. Coming specifically to traditional retail, a growth of five per cent is expected in the same and is estimated to reach a size of $650 billion (76 per cent). Organised retail is likely to develop by 25 per cent and reach a size of $200 billion by 2020. Since the last five years, Online Retail, both direct and through marketplaces has had a roller-coaster ride in metamorphosing itself from being at a nascent level to becoming the most promising sector in India.
For the future growth of the industry, retailers are also set to embrace Targetted Marketing to augment their operations and keep themselves on par with global standards. Targetted Marketing aims to make the promotions, pricing and distribution of the products and services easier and more cost effective. It envelopes all the aspects of marketing and involves breaking a market into segments and paying more attention to the ones that are of paramount importance for the company. For instance, firms can create e-mail campaigns and send to a specific set of customers depending on who the company wants to target. In order to know their target audience, companies can use various nifty tools like social media. These have helped marketers and SMEs track the target audience in real time through the fan pages of other companies. Besides this, they also provide an in-depth graphical data about every person who is connected with the page. Targetted Marketing is the mantra for finding the target audience that will help the retail sector survive cut throat competition. Innovative thinking and technology aided growth strategies are what will separate the lions from the lambs when it comes to this ever-evolving industry.
(These are purely personal views of Youshine founder Ashish Sood and Indiantelevision.com does not necessarily subscribe to these views.)
MUMBAI: From flights to tracks, Cleartrip is now trying to keep every journey on the same ticket. Cleartrip, part of Flipkart, has launched train ticket bookings through a partnership with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, marking its entry into India’s vast rail travel ecosystem.
The integration allows users to search, book and manage train journeys directly within the app, as the company pushes towards becoming a unified, multi-modal travel platform. The move plugs Cleartrip into one of the world’s largest transportation networks, where over 800 million reserved passengers travel annually, alongside a daily footfall of around 23 million across Indian Railways.
The offering includes bookings across routes nationwide, covering General and Tatkal quotas as per Ministry of Railways guidelines. Users can also access real-time seat availability, fare insights, PNR status tracking, berth preferences and digital payment options within a single interface.
The expansion reflects a broader shift in travel platforms from specialising in a single mode to stitching together end-to-end journeys. For Cleartrip, the bet is not just on scale, but on simplifying a system often seen as complex and fragmented.
Company executives said the focus is on embedding predictive intelligence and personalisation into the booking journey, aiming to make everything from discovery to post-booking support faster and more intuitive.
The train booking feature is currently live on the app, with plans to extend it to the web platform soon, signalling a push towards a seamless cross-platform experience.
In a country where railways move billions each year, the next battleground for travel apps may well be decided not in the skies, but on the tracks.
