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Introduction

Retailing is considered the world's largest industry with US $ 6.6 trillion sales annually. In India, retailing is considered the largest employer after agriculture, employing over 8% of the population. India has the highest outlet population in the world with over 12 million outlets. The Indian Retail Industry is still evolving as an 'Industry', and it has a long way to go.
The evolution of the Indian Retail Market is quite interesting to be studied. It had its origins in the village weekly markets and melas, the convenience stores, the Khadi stores and the co-operative stores, before graduating to the present day forms of retailing.

The retail sector in India can be broadly classified into the formal and the informal retail sectors. The informal retail sector typically consists of small-time retailers with tax evasions and non-conformance to labour laws. The formal retail sector, which typically consists of large retailers, ensures greater measures of tax enforcements and also a high level of labour usage monitoring.

The retail market size in India is estimated to be around $ 180 billion. Retailing provides jobs to almost 15 percent of employable Indian adults and it is perhaps the largest contributor to India's GDP. But the flip side is that the average size of each of the retail outlets in India is only 50 square feet, and though a large employer, the industry is very unorganized, fragmented and with a rural bias. India's status as a good IT hub for outsourcing by U.S. companies has led to young Indians between 20 to 24 years old taking up call center jobs straight out of college. This is a consumer base that typically lives at home, with the family. They have disposable income that is totally discretionary and about 20 to 30 percent higher than prevailing wages.

"We have tripled our sales in Bangalore city in the last three years," says Shumone Chatterjee, Marketing Director, Levi Strauss India. And he believes this is largely due to the effect of disposable income coming into the hands of the 18-22 age group employed in BPO jobs.

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* Contributed by -
Thomas Cris Sarasam,
B.E. (Elec. & Comm.), Karunya Institute of Technology, Bharathiar University,
Currently pursuing MBA (Systems/Marketing), College of Engg, Trivandrum.