Nagpur, Nov 27 (PTI) Future Group CEO Kishore Biyanitoday said the much-believed burgeoning online retail sectorin India has a threat from physical retail models like BigBazaar and Easyday, owing to low business share and high costof business of the former.
The retail champion said although the next trend isdigitisation, but physical and digital are not different aslayering of technology over physical is the need of the hour.
"Online retail has a threat from us and it's time peoplerealised that they are not a threat to us, as they don't evenhave 1 per cent business share and the cost of doing businessis also too high," Biyani told PTI.
Over the years, part of the retail consumers have movedto online platform such as Flipkart and Amazon for purchase ofthe daily use items.
"If you look world over, Alibaba is only buying physicalretail, so is Amazon and therefore times have changed," Biyanisaid adding that the fever of online shopping of consumeritems by Indians have gone away.
The leading retail chain is on an aggressive expansionmode witnessing huge demand and had recently announced opening10,000 member-only Easyday stores to make it a Rs 1.5-trillionbusiness opportunity by 2022.
The group unveiled a 30-year vision, Retail 3.0, by whenit plans to become Asia's largest integrated consumer retailerby 2047 with revenue of in excess of USD 1 trillion.
Biyani said the fashion and food categories are seeingcontinuous demand with the fashion segment growing rapidlyand chains such as FBB, Central and Brand Factory are in goodshape.
When asked about his views on online retail taking overphysical retail, Biyani said both are converging and ten yearsfrom now everything will converge completely and the companyhas always been at the forefront, not missing any trend.
"China which people think is the most digital drivencountry has 82 per cent physical, America has 89 per centphysical model and similarly India too has huge potential forphysical retail as online share is very less," Biyani said.
"We are called Future group because we look at the futureand plan much before," he added.
As per a joint report by Ficci and Deloitte, increasinguse of smartphones, apps, web and social media will lead togrowth of omni-channel retail by amalgamation of offline andonline services with Indian retail industry which is growingat 10 per cent, may almost double to Rs 85 trillion (lakhcrore) by 2021.
Another report by Ficci and PwC last year said theconsumer spending will rise backed by robust economic growthand rising household incomes. PTI PRJ RKLMR.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.