Splendor of splurging

No longer is country’s consuming populace held back by lack of choice. A far cry from days when ‘phoren’ goods used to define how ‘well’ one is, today’s consumers have learnt to live life ‘kingsize’, which is by way of splurging over consumer items. Let us look at some figures that stare at me in today’s ET (Feb 17).

The pie that belongs to organized retail sale in the entire countrywide consumer spend of $445 billion (Rs.20 lakh crore) is worth $12.4 billion or Rs.55,000 crore in 2006. Within Rs.20 lakh crore is embedded both organized and unorganized retail sale of Rs.12 lakh crore and the rest Rs.8 lakh crore toward other spends like rent, education, health, travel, family, etc.

Talking about organized retail sale of Rs.55,000 crore, it has seen an annual growth of 34.8% between 2004 and 2006. This is an awesome increase by any yardstick, yet experts say all we’re seeing today is only scratching the surface. This explains why there is a virtual scramble among top guns to establish retail chains across the country.

Among the top items in organized retail sale, the breakup is like this (year-on-year growth ’04 to ’06 given within brackets).

• Clothing, textile and fashion: Rs.18,500 crore (30.3%)
• Food and grocery: Rs.5,000 crore (30.8%)
• Footwear: Rs.4,500 crore (34.2%) -> surprise!
• Consumer durables: Rs.4,300 crore (31.2%)
• Food and beverage: Rs.3,400 crore (30.8%)

Related reading:

1. Onrush of retailing
2. Reliance’s retail push
3. Wall-Mart and the rest

Technorati Tags: retail, consumer, consumers, indian, india, chain store