Small And Medium Retailers In India

Small and Medium Enterprises in India is a very large and extremely difficult market . To use a cliched phrase, India behaves like many different countries. Also, geographically, you don't know where the customers are, which city and which marketplace. Therefore to support these businesses it is important to create a comprehensive ecosystem around them rather than piecemeal efforts. This obviously takes longer than one would expect, given the infrastructure, lack of education and awareness etc.

From the SMEs' perspective, what they are looking for is a

• a solution that will help address their business needs
• a solution that can be easily implemented, and
• a solution that is cost effective in the short and the long term.

By an estimate by AMI Partners Inc., there are 2.7 million small businesses in India (less than 99 people) which do not have a single computer and a major proportion of them belong to the wholesale and retail sector. Also, India has the largest no. of retail stores in the world, Highest shop density (11 outlets for every 1000 people) . With close to 12 million retail outlets the country has one of the highest retail densities worldwide.However, the per capita retail space is one of the lowest in India, which is a ramification of the small sizes of the stores. Which again reflects on the largely unorganised retail industry in India.

Impressions about the Small and Medium retail being largely unorganised are authentic, however , by the same logic all large retailers may not be organised. Paying/Not paying of all applicable taxes being the conceptual distinction between organised and unorganised retail, retailers are increasingly moving to the terminology of 'modern retail' vis-a-vis 'traditional retail'. (which was mostly the meaning anyway even earlier when 'organised' and 'unorganised" terms were used)

All these traditional retailers fall in the purview of Micro and Small Businesses,. Needless to say, the challenges for this sector are only magnifying by the day.

Besides all the vocalised needs , what might make a difference to these businesses is mentoring in a structured manner. Evaluating the areas of mentoring ......i will leave for the next post. Watch this space...........