Picture an upper-middle class consumer out shopping groceries in a large, air-conditioned hypermarket after catching the new movie at the mall.

Global best-practice is the standard here. The aisles are wide enough to allow two shopping-carts to pass each other comfortably, and are organized according to product categories. The shelves are neatly ticketed, and the products equipped with bar-codes to allow for quick checkout. The emphasis is clearly on convenience. But (surprise!) the store has apparently underestimated the demand for the conveniently pre-cut and packaged vegetables. The loose vegetables are going untouched, while the pre-cut packs are almost sold out. Looks like another win for modern retailers.

This scenario would seem plausible to most people who have observed or been part of the growth of modern retailing in a market like India.

The “organized retail boom” and “growing consuming class” are consuming miles of newsprint and eons of airtime, while the malls are the gleaming new temples at which every devotee of retail must pay respect. This is the picture of modernization or organization of the Indian retail sector that comes to the mind of most people.

On the other hand, the picture that comes to mind when one thinks about the traditional sabziwala (greengrocer) is a total contrast. A messy side-street, with the push-carts overflowing with an indifferent mix of vegetables, other than the occasional yellow bell pepper or some other such “exotic” produce. Or the typical kirana shop owner scrawling an illegible list of items and figures on a scrap of paper and handing it over as the “bill” for the groceries one has just bought. Surely, a business model that is not going anywhere fast.

So, to most people, the line between modern or “organized” retail and traditional or “unorganized” retail is quite clear, and the differences quite stark. “Organized retail” usually means large, “corporate” stores that personify the so-called “retail revolution” which apparently is about 3-5 years old, while traditional retail business usually means “unorganized” and “belonging to the past” (or at least, soon to belong to the past).

However, a revolution is when the majority starts getting impacted. When only a few create a change that mainly benefits them, it is a coup.

To anyone who has been involved in the retail sector for longer, in fact, there has been a far more interesting, widespread and ongoing change in the retail business over the past couple of decades, and possibly further back. This is not restricted to a few corporate groups. It is not even restricted to the front-end (store-end) of the business.

The change is created by the feedback loop between customer expectation and the minimum acceptable standard of service which is constantly being moved up. Of course, the newly-minted corporate retailers have a role to play in this. But, more than that, it involves many small changes accumulating organically over a period of time involving individual kirana owners, farmers, wholesale traders, market associations, the FMCG companies and even the migrant villager who sets up a hand-cart that may be stocked daily with rolling credit from the money-lender.

And that is my point. The modernization of retail is an ongoing process, and it is sustainable because it is widespread.

In recent Indian retail history, as customers we may identify a point where we saw the local shop shift from stocks in a dingy back-room to being displayed openly, setting the example for other shops in the market.

But the changes needed were not just at the retailer’s end – they also required the wholesale vendor’s approach as well as the FMCG principal’s approach to begin changing.

Certainly a shift occurred in service standards, when vegetable vendors started taking home-delivery orders on mobile phones – impossible without the wider telecom price-quality revolution. And when credit card swipe machines started appearing in the kirana, something that could have only happened with the support of the banks and their intermediaries.

And the pre-cut packaged vegetables whose demand the hypermarket had underestimated? Well, the sabziwala has that covered as well – beginning with the packs of cleaned baby-corn, this list has now expanded to include pre-shelled green chick-pea (chholiya), cut jackfruit and chopped sarson saag – vegetables that can be quite inconvenient to clean at home when time is scarce.

The impact of this modernization was brought home to me, when I observed a customer reprimanding the local sabziwala for not keeping adequate stock of shelled peas. The interesting aspect was that this was not one-half of an upwardly-mobile DINK couple. The customer here was a domestic helper, whose complaint was that he had many other jobs to get done around the house, and shelling peas was something that was too time-consuming and best “outsourced”!

So, to all those who have the question, “what is the key to succeeding in the Indian retail market”: the key may lie somewhere entirely different from where you have been looking, or the customer-profile that you have been building.

We are surely underestimating the business potential amongst India’s middle and not-so-middle classes – as we would discover if only we were to re-state business objectives and tweak strategy a little bit, and look at the market without high income-tinted glasses.

Among the frenetic activity of large stores opening and the expressed visions of organized retail taking over the market in the past couple of years, the competition is becoming more intense with each passing month. What would set the winner apart is not just the customer experience and satisfaction but also customer loyalty – where, for instance, an “unorganized” kirana store can still beat a much-larger organized retail business due to the intimate understanding of their customer base and micromanagement of the store.

What it would take for the organized retailers to replicate that experience is the people who create a culture of caring. This may sound “soppy”, but only true concern for the customer produces fabulous service from a salesperson. And if the salesperson has true concern, then he / she is probably showing the same concern to others (including colleagues and others in his / her life), and this itself can’t exist in isolation.

Many organised retailers have already made huge investments to put the technology and systems in place in the store. The missing link, however, is bridging them and customer with care and understanding, which is an absolute essential for the front end of any retail business. When time and competition is getting tougher by the day, creating a culture of caring makes great business sense for an organized retailer.

An article by Shailesh Dobhal and Bhanu Pande in The Economic Times today refers to a growing inequality of income in India. (“India Rising, Bharat awaits for the trickle to turn flood”)

The change for all of urban India is reported to be 15%, which is quite visible, especially in the larger cities where the change is possibly greater. What is worrying is that even in rural India the change is 13%.

And these figures are for 2004-05, from a report authored by NCAER’s Dr. Rajesh Shukla. My guess is that the difference would be even higher now, 3 years later.

Obviously at a personal level this should concern all. Each person is part of the ecosystem – there is only so long one can hide in ivory towers behind tall walls and locked gates. We are most secure and content when our neighbour is secure and content. Stark disparities that grow even more stark are not a way to develop security.

However, one might ask, why should business managers in consumer goods and retail sectors concern themselves with this phenomenon from a business perspective?

The answer should be self-evident – as shared in a presentation at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Retail Summit in 2006 – a retailer can grow its market by encouraging the development of smaller enterprises, especially those in lower income areas. As these enterprises grow, so does prosperity and available income.

“Grow your wealth by growing someone else’s.” That may seem like an odd notion. But think – is it so odd?

In May 2007 Arun Maira, Chairman of the Boston Consulting Group’s business in India, presented scenarios that were developed in an exercise a few years ago, about the possible developmental trajectories of India. These include:

• “Atakta Bharat (India Stuck)” described as ‘Buffalos Wallowing’,

• “Bollyworld” (the crazy mix of glamour and tragedy) described in two parts as ‘Peacocks Strutting, Birds Scrambling’ and ‘Tigers Growling, Wolves Prowling’ and

• “Pahale India” (India First), subtitled Fireflies Arising.

Here’s his very thought-provoking article (India: Many Million Fireflies Now) that is well worth a read.

As a working wife and mother who wants to run her home as competently as she runs her business, the advent of ‘organized’ retail, super markets and well formatted MBO’s seemed like an answer to one’s prayers. Yes, this was certainly what I dreamt of whenever I raced against the clock to get the month’s grocery shopping done in time to get home to cook dinner; or when the family had to subsist on instant noodles because picking up one’s dry rations and veggies from different locations at the end of a working day didn’t work out because of time and logistic constraints.

‘Organized’ retail is the answer to everyone’s prayers – the consumer and the producer…..or is it?

Products sit beautifully packaged on shelves which are easy to access, saying – BUY ME!!! Or BUY ME and get another like me free (oops, sorry! The free stock just ran out!)! Today I whiz around well lit and well laid out stores picking up products I need, and also don’t need, in double quick time to end up in a traffic jam at the cash counter!! And while I stand there watching the harried sales clerk struggle with the operation of a temperamental bar-code reader and the rush of shoppers waiting their turn to pay, I begin to notice (and miss) the many differences in my shopping experiences of the bygone days. I miss the ‘soft’ skills of the friendly neighborhood Lalaji who would notice and gently point out deviances to one’s standard shopping list; his mammoth memory bank that didn’t require him to cross check prices of unmarked/bar-coded products; his verbal promotion of new products; his ‘home delivery’ service of products that may not be in stock ……and all in all the complete warm, social and informative shopping experience.

For ‘organized’ retail in India to become an indispensable part of the shopping needs of the emerging segment of the urban Indian working women, retailers need to address many issues that go beyond large stylish stores, slick visual merchandising and bargains. Store planograms need to stock merchandise as per an Indian housewife shopping list which follows a pattern of ‘Dal’, ‘chawal’, ‘atta’, ‘tail’, ‘masala’…..rather than the western format which starts off with breakfast foods and so on. Shopping for Groceries in India follows a monthly pattern rather than a weekly pattern, and this needs to be taken into account while merchandise planning and stocking is done, so that stores are adequately and correctly stocked. Most importantly, deployment and training of staff needs to address peak and trough periods of the store traffic, and the ability to deal with client claims and returns efficiently.

Till then, either which ways, instant noodles will be the standard family fare on the nights that ‘mom’ goes grocery shopping!

A few days back I met a friend, a mother of a six year old and a primary school teacher by choice (so that she can be “gainfully occupied”!). We exchanged the woes of being a working woman, and she exclaimed that she was planning to begin getting her lunch and dinner organized through a “dabbawala”. This would free up the time spent on “non productive” chores of buying monthly grocery, the weekly veggies and stocking up to spend on “more important” activities in life.

No, she is not necessarily representative of a particular consumer segment, nor can one say at this stage that there is a significant number of such women in our society that “dabbawalas” should sit up and take notice of, who would want to give up the pleasures of browsing, shopping and bargaining and then let go of the appreciation that follows conjuring up the delicious cuisines.

But it is does make one think about how our changing lifestyle and attitudes are changing our needs and wants (and hence the desired products and services).

It makes one want to gaze into the crystal ball and see what promise does the changing social fabric of India hold for the market of products like pre-cut vegetables, or ready to-eat food, what about products like sanitized wipes. What does it mean for the potential of services like that of a qualified nanny or a temporary baby-sitter, or house cleaning services, or professional laundry services or dial-a-cab?

What would you (as a consumer or a marketer) like to add to the wish-list?