E-commerce share to rise to 12pc from 2pc in 10 years: Walmart India CEO

Share of e-commerce is set to rise, despite the growth in brick and mortar or physical retail from 2 percent to 12 percent over the next 10 years, aided by pick up in Omnichannel format, said Krish Iyer, President & CEO, Walmart India and Chairman of India Food Forum, at India Food Forum 2019 on Tuesday. Gap between physical and digital needs to be bridged as the consumer is going digital in terms of experience as also his touchpoints, he said delivering the inaugural address at the two-day India Food Forum 2019.

Sharing his insight at Walmart, Iyer said that by enriching customer experience, the consumer started buying Rs 180 over Omnichannel instead of buying Rs 100 from the store itself and later the ratio in the store was Rs 70 while digital was Rs 110. Calling for technology adoption as key to retail growth, 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 Rs 92,000 crore in food processing in catchment areas is needed to overcome the wastage of 30 percent of all food and 40 percent of fruits and vegetables,” he said.

Earlier, speaking at the forum, Ajay Macaden, Executive Director, Nielsen said, “Consumers have evolved now for omni-channel even for specific categories like milk and bakery. Increased internet and smartphone penetration has led to multiple shopping channels and change in consumer behaviour.”

In markets around the world categories such as travel, entertainment (books, music, events) and durable goods (fashion, IT/mobile, electronics) are the front runners for consumers to enter the online retail sphere. Consumers are, however, also looking for e-commerce options for an increasing range of categories, as their more immediate needs for convenience and ease expands, Macaden said.

Consumers in APAC (Asia Pacific) have even evolved to fresh grocery and packaged goods with China, India, Japan and Korea leading the market. In fact, packaged grocery food and fresh groceries are showing the highest percentage growth of all categories in 2018 in this region, he said.

Other key speakers at the forum included Damodar Mall, CEO, Reliance Retail (Supermarketwala), Sadashiv Nayak, CEO Food business, Future Group, Mohit Kampani, CEO, Aditya Birla Retail, C. Gopalkrishnan, Founder, N. Supermarkets, Ramesh Menon, Former CEO, Hypercity, Mohit Anand, MD, Kellogg, India and South to name a few.