Retail and FMCG sectors form the direct path to the India growth story stated Naushad Forbes, vice president, CII & director, Forbes Marshall Private while inaugurating the CII National Retail summit and CII National FMCG summit on Jun. 24, 2014 at Mumbai. These sectors offer great opportunity for both process and product innovation. These shall be critical to delivering profitable growth to the sectors.
Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, partner, Rare Enterprises in his keynote address shared his very optimistic view about the long term potential of the consumer sector in India and India's growth prospects. He felt that organised retail would grow from USD 40 billion to USD 200 billion in the next 5 to 7 years . Successful models of retail namely Food & Grocery sectors to Footwear to Lifestyle products have done exceedingly well on the Indian stock markets and given very high returns to the investor.
2014 will be a good year for retailing in India as income levels have increased for much of the Indian population. Availability of a wide range of brands from luxury goods to basic private label products gave consumers more options to choose from and also boosted awareness of particular brands and products.
Looking ahead the mood remains positive as the government is working to put economic growth on track. Once there is semblance of growth, funds should also pour into the retail sector. As an industry, the retail sector is seeking more foreign institutional investor (FII) participation in retail, as it will ease the funds crunch especially for unlisted retailers. In addition, there is much anticipation that there will be more clarity on the rollout of GST, which will help in uniform taxation across states and ease the service tax pressure.
Over the past decade, the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) sector of India has been annually growing at a consistent rate of 11%. This double digit growth each year has been possible by increasing consumer demands. In the past five years the growth had then accelerated to 17%.