Big retail is on a roll in India. Giants such as Reliance Retail, Bharti and Subhiksha are planning national roll outs of their retail outlets, with varying degrees of segmentation. As an industry, retailing could see investments of over $10 billion over the next three to four years and every crore of retail investment would see demand for 10,000 sq ft. Industry experts believe that even if only $2 billion of the projected investment materialises, it would mean that there would be a demand for almost 10 million sq ft in the next two to three years from retail alone. If all the planned retail investment happens, the space requirement would be 50 million sq ft.

With organised retail contributing over 40% to the Rs 64,000 crore real estate sector in India, Gibson Vedamani, chief executive officer, Retailers Association of India says, Over the past three to four years, the growth of retailing and the demand of retailers has motivated the realty sector to aggressively look at developing properties for retailing, specifically malls. Earlier malls were restricted to just shopping centres but now malls are considered the right profile to cater to shopping needs under one umbrella. Each and every need of customers right from their footfalls to quick turnaround at the cash counters should be met so that customers do not have to wait for long in the queue especially during weekends. Well, this can be done when the number of cash counters in hypermarkets are increased at every store level.

Bharti Retail Pvt Ltd—a wholly owned subsidiary of Bharti Enterprises—is planning to invest $2 to $2.5 billion by 2015 in setting up retail outlets in supermarket and hypermarket formats pan-India. Says Rajan Bharti Mittal, joint managing director, Bharti Enterprises, We are looking at approximately 10 million sq ft of retail experience across all cities in India with a population of over one million. The 60,000 people we plan to employ, will include ex-servicemen and women and provide multifaceted career opportunities for the youth of India.

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