Retail in Asia

In Trends

Retail chains in India bet big on online presence as sales in stores see a drop

"Click & Collect", "Ship from Store" and "Endless Aisles", seem to be the new buzzwords for brick-and-mortar retailers. These are terms being used by offline retailers to explain their recent move to increase investments into the online space by adopting an omni-channel strategy.

Indian retail chains like Shoppers Stop, Tata-owned Croma, Reliance Retail and ITC show a range of products with different variants online, but may not stock all of it on their offline floors. This helps them cut down on real estate costs and allows consumers to order products of their choice.

They are doing this because sales have been affected for such retailers in categories like apparel and electronics, by e-commerce players. Retailers say that investments into technology will be an enabler for them to achieve a level playing field with e-commerce players. Avijit Mitra, CEO of Infiniti Retail, which runs largest electronics retail chain Croma, says omni-channel retail has the potential to grow as the seamless integration of online and offline will help achieve better space optimisation, faster delivery and also quicker after-sales service.