Retail giants eye rural India, small towns to push growth

Retail giants eye rural India, small towns to push growth
NEW DELHI: Retail giants have involved aggressive plans to form inroads into the smaller cities and towns of India and are employing a spread of tools, including ramping up local language coverage.
With farm sector seen as a key support to growth against the mayhem triggered by the pandemic, these companies sense a chance to extend sales depending on rural and little town India. “While our overall ticket sizes have gone down, the large number of latest consumers that have come on board from Bharat have made up for that loss. As a result, our sales have doubled compared to pre-Covid,” said a senior executive at one among India’s leading ecommerce companies, who didn’t wish to be quoted.
Sample this: Around 65% of Amazon India’s orders currently come from small cities and towns. And quite 50% sellers on the US-headquartered retail giant’s marketplace are from tier-2-and-below markets like Aligarh in UP, Idukki in Kerala, Angul in Odisha and Rajpipla in Gujarat.
Similarly, during the lockdown till August, Amazon’s rival, Walmart-backed Flipkart onboarded 8,000 sellers, with quite 70% of them coming from smaller towns.
“As a homegrown e-commerce marketplace, we are committed to bringing subsequent 200 million consumers online. ‘Solving for Bharat’ isn’t a technique for us, it’s ‘the business’ for us at Flipkart,” said Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer at the Flipkart Group, which also operates online fashion marketplace Myntra.
The strong push into rural and semi-urban markets was made possible by several initiatives specific to the Indian market like voice, video and vernaculars launched by these companies.
“Hundreds of thousands

NEW DELHI: Retail giants have involved aggressive plans to form inroads into the smaller cities and towns of India and are employing a spread of tools, including ramping up local language coverage.
With farm sector seen as a key support to growth against the mayhem triggered by the pandemic, these companies sense a chance to extend sales depending on rural and little town India. “While our overall ticket sizes have gone down, the large number of latest consumers that have come on board from Bharat have made up for that loss. As a result, our sales have doubled compared to pre-Covid,” said a senior executive at one among India’s leading ecommerce companies, who didn’t wish to be quoted.
Sample this: Around 65% of Amazon India’s orders currently come from small cities and towns. And quite 50% sellers on the US-headquartered retail giant’s marketplace are from tier-2-and-below markets like Aligarh in UP, Idukki in Kerala, Angul in Odisha and Rajpipla in Gujarat.
Similarly, during the lockdown till August, Amazon’s rival, Walmart-backed Flipkart onboarded 8,000 sellers, with quite 70% of them coming from smaller towns.
“As a homegrown e-commerce marketplace, we are committed to bringing subsequent 200 million consumers online. ‘Solving for Bharat’ isn’t a technique for us, it’s ‘the business’ for us at Flipkart,” said Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer at the Flipkart Group, which also operates online fashion marketplace Myntra.
The strong push into rural and semi-urban markets was made possible by several initiatives specific to the Indian market like voice, video and vernaculars launched by these companies.
“Hundreds of thousands of Amazon customers from tier-1, -2 and -3 cities across Uttar Pradesh , Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh have switched to the Hindi shopping experience,” said an Amazon India spokesperson. “In the past five months, the adoption of the Hindi shopping experience has grown by 3X.”
The bumper crop estimates have also added to the attraction of the agricultural and little town markets. consistent with an estimate by Care Ratings, if all goes well, there might be over Rs 26,000 crore of income that might be spent across various commodities and services after adjusting for investment, inputs and savings.
Using the spending pattern within the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) surveys, the ratings agency estimates that a touch over 45% of Rs 26,600 crore might be spent on clothing & footwear (25%) and on durables (over 20% on automobiles, electronics, etc) before the festive season. this is able to be a results of the increased spending thanks to the robust kharif crop.
That may be an enormous boost to the economy, which is predicted to post a pointy contraction within the current financial year thanks to the impact of the strict lockdown. Most economists expect the contraction to be within the range of 5-15%. Brick-and-mortar retailers, too, have turned their attention to the hinterlands.
“There has not only been a reverse migration of blue collar workers. Thousands of white collar workers too have gone home to measure with their parents due to work from home,” said Arvind Mediratta, MD & CEO at Metro Cash & Carry, one among India’s leading B2B wholesalers. “They, too, are now adding to the demand.”
of Amazon customers from tier-1, -2 and -3 cities across Uttar Pradesh , Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh have switched to the Hindi shopping experience,” said an Amazon India spokesperson. “In the past five months, the adoption of the Hindi shopping experience has grown by 3X.”

The bumper crop estimates have also added to the attraction of the agricultural and little town markets. consistent with an estimate by Care Ratings, if all goes well, there might be over Rs 26,000 crore of income that might be spent across various commodities and services after adjusting for investment, inputs and savings.
Using the spending pattern within the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) surveys, the ratings agency estimates that a touch over 45% of Rs 26,600 crore might be spent on clothing & footwear (25%) and on durables (over 20% on automobiles, electronics, etc) before the festive season. this is able to be a results of the increased spending thanks to the robust kharif crop.

That may be an enormous boost to the economy, which is predicted to post a pointy contraction within the current financial year thanks to the impact of the strict lockdown. Most economists expect the contraction to be within the range of 5-15%. Brick-and-mortar retailers, too, have turned their attention to the hinterlands.
“There has not only been a reverse migration of blue collar workers. Thousands of white collar workers too have gone home to measure with their parents due to work from home,” said Arvind Mediratta, MD & CEO at Metro Cash & Carry, one among India’s leading B2B wholesalers. “They, too, are now adding to the demand.”

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