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The New King

The Indian government is talking about "AAM AADMI".

And indeed the next king of the world's largest democracy (read, India) seems to be the Consumer.
Thanks to the boom in the organized retail sector that India is all set to witness.

Retail: A New Craze

Currently, India does not possess a very high percentage of organized retail segments. Even by the most optimistic estimates, the figure stands at less than 5%.

But suddenly the biggest business houses of India have woken up to the great potential of this Rs. 1 lakh crore retail sector. Whether it is Mukesh Ambani, Sunil Bharti Mittal or even the very famous Birla-Tata clans, they have all announced plans to foray into the retail sector.

Today the likes of Wal-Mart and Tesco are all set to debut in India.

Middlemen Eliminated!

But all this is not really going down well with some of our politicians. Their heart goes out for the middlemen. The reason being the impact on middlemen who will bear the biggest brunt of this foray of these business barons into these sectors, for they will suffer complete elimination. Infact there were recent reports of a demand to conduct a study on the impact of FDI in retail.

But to be honest, even without the likes of Wal-Mart in India, our very own Kishore Biyani-owned Future Group (which owns Big Bazaar) seems to be doing pretty well with hefty footfalls. Also, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Fresh seems to have made an impressive start. So sole Indian ventures too have performed well till date.

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* Contributed by: -
Shekhar Arya,
MBA 1st Year,
Department of Management Studies, IIT Roorkee.