Share of e-commerce is set to rise from 2% to 12% in next 10 years despite the growth in brick and mortar retail, said Krish Iyer, president & CEO Walmart India.
Speaking at the India Food Forum 2019, Mr. Iyer said that the gap between physical and digital needs to be bridged as the consumer was going digital in terms of experience. Sharing his insight at Walmart, Mr. Iyer said that by enriching customer experience, consumers started buying stuff worth ₹180 over omni-channel instead of buying stuff worth ₹100 from the store itself. This ratio later changed to ₹70 in store compared to ₹110 on the digital platform.
Calling for technology adoption as key to retail growth, Mr. Iyer enumerated four key challenges led by food security, safety & nutrition, food wastage and sustainability.
“Feeding a rising world population of 10 billion from 7 billion amid rising death of infant children due to malnutrition, changing climatic conditions are key challenges. In India, phenomenal efforts are made on the regulatory front for safety and nutrition that will follow with awareness, compliance and enforcement of law. Significant investment amounting to ₹92,000 crore in food processing in catchment areas is needed to overcome the wastage of 30% of all food and 40% of fruits and vegetables,” he said.
Ajay Macaden, executive director, Nielsen, a market research firm, said that increased smartphone penetration had led to consumers opting for omni-channel platformsin newer categories.
“Consumers have evolved now for omni-channel even for specific categories such as milk and bakery. Increased internet & smartphone penetration has led to multiple shopping channels and change in consumer behaviour,” said Mr. Macaden.
He further added that while markets around the world see categories such as travel, entertainment and durable goods as the most popular for consumers to enter the online retail sphere, consumers are also looking for e-commerce options for an increasing range of categories, as their more immediate needs for convenience and ease expands.
He highlighted the fact that consumers in the Asia-Pacific region have even evolved to fresh grocery and packaged goods with China, India, Japan and Korea leading the market. Packaged grocery food and fresh groceries are showing the highest growth of all categories in 2018 in this region, he said.