From kiranas to online carts

"Food retailing took a huge leap in India when organised retail started with the setting up of medium to large format stores, including hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores. The success factors of these stores largely depended on the location, catchment area they served and their costs - capital cost and lease rent. Over time, many closed down due to high cost. The next big push for grocery and food retailing came with the internet revolution. One of the first businesses in the e-commerce space was online retailing of grocery and food. The online grocery market in India is estimated at $150 million only, which is a fraction of the total grocery market of $360 billion. The total grocery market is expected to grow to $1 trillion by 2020. If we estimate online grocery to be even 1%, the expected growth would be tremendous."

Dhanraj Bhagat
Partner, Grant Thornton India LLP

This article appeared in Financial Express on 22nd August, 2017.