From the pages of Images Retail (April 2009)

What’s your design?
By Ananya Saha

As the well-known architect Charles Eames put it, “Design is a plan for arranging elements in such away as best to accomplish aparticular purpose.” And retail, simply, is the sum total of various elements to boost consumption. Unfortunately For a few Retailers in India, retailing is still defined by the number of outlets that house a brand rather than the presentation of the brands.

Recession, another name for extended discount season, has got the Indian retailers unaware. The retailers, who were high on the retail wave, are now frantically redrawing their plans. Closure of the unviable stores, pink slips to the employees does not sound news anymore. But what can a retailer do, when the going is getting so tough? Recession, or no recession, people with disposable incomes will spend. The same is true especially in India — with thousands of festivals and marriages all round the year — retailers should not be complaining about low sales. The eternal question, however, remains — how to attract the junta? If pulling the shutters down was the answer, the market place would be another growing desert. But it is not so.

Today, well-known retailers such as Selfridges and Harrods are taking the ‘recession’ opportunity to redesign and remodel their stores. It is no news that through the design history, many of the most exciting periods have been during economic downturns. The result? Consumers develop the interest of simply ‘checking out’ the ‘new’ store, and end up buying the products. The first element on the brand strategy, ‘design’, has hardly been given its due till date. Design can establish the most-specific purpose of attracting footfalls, especially when the consumers are cutting down on their spending budget...
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Health is, indeed, Wealth
By Piasi Sinha

With a vision to change the healthcare and pharmacy retail scenario in eastern India, The Kolkata-based Rs.2,000-crore FMCGgiant Emami ventured into pharmacy retail almost 10 years ago with FrankRoss. Today, with 30 outlets in varied formats, the retail chain is certainly one ofthe major players in the category.

Conquering all categories across the board, the wave of consumerism and organised retail has also hit the healthcare market, a very sensitive sector in India. In the last five years, India’s healthcare sector has undergone a sea change. The category has grown by over 15 per cent giving rise to various corporate players emerging in the segment.

Opportunities galore
Across the globe, the healthcare industry is growing exponentially and in India its untapped potential is just being explored. As per a study conducted by Technopak, the Indian healthcare sector is expected to grow at 15 to 20 per cent to USD 80 billion by 2013. Currently, the estimated market size of the domestic healthcare retail is almost USD 40 billion.

As per IMS Healthcare (Intercontinental Marketing Services, which provides market intelligence to pharmaceutical healthcare companies), the Indian pharmaceutical market is the world’s 13th largest in terms of value and fourth largest in terms of volume; at least 12 per cent of household income is spent on healthcare — a fact that is enough to draw the attention of entrepreneurs. In India, the pharmaceutical market is dominated by over 10 lakh independent chemists and around 2,000 organised retailers. More importantly, the organised market constitutes only two per cent of the overall domestic pharmacy retail market. India, being an emerging economy, clearly has immense potential in the healthcare category. No wonder, then, that retail brands such as Apollo, Religare, Medplus and Manipal Cure & Care have been on an expansion spree for the last few years to increase their market share in the category… To read more, subscribe to the magazine.