Indian retail giant Aditya Birla is focusing its expansion on smaller cities and rural areas, students at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad heard on Saturday.
Aditya Birla Retail’s vice president for FMCG Sumit Chandana took part in a panel discussion on retail innovation at a marketing conference at the ISB.
He told students that consumers in tier two and three cities had high disposable income and were not shy of shopping in modern retail formats.
“Our expansion plans to a large extent are centred around smaller towns,” Mr Chandana said. Around 200 of Aditya Birla’s 540 stores are located in smaller cities and towns.
Companies involved in modern retail in India are now focusing more on increasing efficiencies than sheer expansion, he explained.
Understanding customers using shopper analysis was a critical challenge for modern retail, added V Ganesh, head of new geographies & direct trade at Colgate-Palmolive India.
He predicted that modern retail would account for around 20 per cent of India’s retail sector within the next three years.
