The Big Box 2024 India held at Sterlings Mac Hotel Bengaluru brought together industry leaders, innovators, and stakeholders to discuss the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping the retail and e-commerce landscape in India. With rapid digital transformation sweeping the country, the summit delved into key topics such as omnichannel retailing, technology advances, supply chain optimization, changing consumer behavior, and the evolving regulatory environment. With insightful speeches, thought-provoking panel discussions, and expert insights from distinguished speakers representing both established players and disruptive startups in the sector, the conference provided a unique platform for networking, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. Big Box 2024 India manifested a landscape navigating and providing valuable insights and opportunities to succeed in the digital age.

The event began with a keynote session of Rajib Dey, Head of Visual Merchandising, Reliance Trends at Reliance Retail. He shed light on the Indian Retail market, the challenges posed, and the impact of technology on the market.       

Rajib says, “The Internet industry is booming quite a bit in India, and it's a challenging situation, as the leaders in the retail market are looking at about a $2 trillion business by 2032 with unlocking new opportunities. This is very optimistic for us, and we are always trying to find something better, both in terms of the fundamentals and in terms of the experience journey for our retail customers." He adds, "We have always maintained a balance between unorganized and organized retail; when we started in 2000, retail was a significant part of India. However, the growth rate of unorganized retail is also quite high, and that percentage is still there. Similarly, given the growth in retail, the proportion of unorganized and organized retail has increased, but the balance between the two has not changed significantly. We have launched our retail project with a growth rate to reach about 80 percent by 2025.”

Rajib continues, “We face several challenges in terms of technology and new customer acquisition. Technology is part of our everyday life.  In the current market scenario, the Indian retail industry is a $65 billion business. So, the e-commerce market is growing, and development through omni-channel is happening. Many retailers are getting into omnichannel. There are still opportunities, but not all retailers can do this. In the future, someone could create a platform to balance these retailer-to-retailer-only channels. This kind of experience and technology can accelerate the growth of the entire retail industry.”

Online Retailing

When we compare traditional and online retailing, online retailing is much more aggressive, with a market growth rate of 15 percent, while traditional retailing has a growth rate of 6-10 percent. With this change in customer behavior, most people do their research in advance and then visit a physical store. They research across different platforms. They are not loyal to a particular brand. Or they are not interested in a particular platform. This is especially true for airlines, tickets, travel bookings, and everything, but in the future, there will be one master platform that will be able to bring all the data together. 

Omnichannel Retailing

When talking about omnichannel retailer statistics, customers prefer 80 percent of online offerings and 20 percent of in-store options. In other words, there is still a difference between online and offline shopping. We need to bridge the gap between online and offline shopping. To do this, we need to provide a personalized customer experience. These repetitive customers will come for personalized, reputable, or integrated stores and this particular consumer. Now, how can you increase that portion of your business? The most interesting part is that if you have the data part of the customer behavior, then it becomes easier to tie them together.

Evolving Consumer Behavior and Shopping Trends

The BIGBOX 2024 event continued with a Panel discussion, which included panelists Sreemoyee Dastidar, COE Lead—Customer Experience, Philips; Surbhi Bhatia, Founder and CEO, The Mom Store; Ranjan Kumar, AVP, Bata India Limited; and moderator Rajdeep Sarkar, National Head Business Development—Easy buy, Landmark Group, Lifestyle International Pvt. Ltd.

Surbhi Bhatia, Founder and CEO, The Mom Store, sheds light on how customer demand and lifestyle changes are forcing companies to change strategy. She says, “The customer demand and lifestyle today are driving the entire change in how the brands or customers approach shopping and retail. Customers today define everything: the products that they want, the consciousness that they want from the brand, the accessibility, and the availability. If you look at availability just 10 or 15 years ago, shopping and retail used to be like a family event. People would make two lists, go to a retail store on the weekend, and plan out their buys well in advance. Today, with the advent of digital media, e-commerce, and social media, this has become a sort of anonymous experience.”

“People are browsing social media or apps all the time, and whenever they think they need something, they just click on the button. So, the availability has completely changed, and the brands now have pressure to be always available on every platform," says Surbhi.

 

"The second is accessibility. People used to plan and make these lists. It used to be a well-planned event. Now, accessibility is so great that people will first filter out one-day and two-day delivery and choose which brand or product can reach them the fastest. That has put pressure on brands to improve their logistics and supply chain—to make themselves available to all customers at all times, leading to a change in the entire supply chain and warehouse punishment and how distribution works.” adds Surbhi. 

Sreemoyee Dastidar, COE Lead- Customer Experience, Philips, shared her thoughts on how e-commerce has changed consumer behavior. She said, “There is not a person in this room who does not have at least one e-commerce app installed on their phone. That's how pervasive the whole of e-commerce is. E-commerce has taken retail by storm. It is shaping the retail trend.  Regardless of B 2 C, you have to rely on e-commerce for the products you are in business for. And you have to be the top ace in e-commerce.”