The seventh edition of India Shopping Centre Forum, India’s only knowledge sharing platform for the shopping centre industry, organised by IMAGES Group, kickstarted at The Renaissance, Mumbai, on Wednesday, May 07, 2014.
The ISCF 2014 foundation session on Retail Real Estate: Market Analysis and Outlook had two bigwigs of the retail industry, Sanjay Dutt, MD, Cushman & Wakefield, and Anshul Jain, DTZ India, enthralling the audience with an interesting presentation on consumer trends and in-store trends, international trends in shopping centres and trends for high street and retail demand versus mall supply–a perspective.
Sanjay spoke actively about the current retail scenario in 2012 and its positive social factors such as favourable demographics and rising consumer spending. Rising investments (USD 433 mn of PERE investment in 2008-14), and supportive policies (100 per cent FDI in single brand retail) and how they will shape the immediate future of the real estate market.
Talking about factors affecting retail demand, Sanjay said: “A host of factors like Demographic, inflation, brand penetration and government policies will play a major factor in organized retail to make it 23 per cent of Indian Retail Market by 2020, as per FICCI.”
According to Sanjay, key mall developments in India’s major eight cities is mainly concentrated in top 4 cities in Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru. Mixed-use mall development is the way forward for these cities’ Shopping centres to maximise growth. “Malls are shifting from fixed rental schemes to minimum guarantee plus revenue sharing. This will be a major trend going forward in India,” he added.
Jain who spoke about India’s entire retail market size, which is about 400-500 billion USD, out of which only about 10 per cent is organised sector, however it is about 30 per cent in case of Chinese retail market.
India is still in the consideration set for the investors, as per GRDI Country Attractiveness. China, Uruguay, Brazil, Turkey are the hot-spots for investments currently, according to Jain.
“India, as compared to developed nations, as per AT Kearney’s Global Retail Development Index
India was 1st in 2009 but was 13th in 2013. This is a point of worry,” Jain said.
A few numbers to ponder over that he shared were that for shopping centres national average is of vacancy of 17 per cent. Family entertainment centres take up less than 4 per cent. Departmental stores take up about 21 per cent. Vacancy in top three cities of Gurgaon, Mumbai Pune is in line with India’s national average. Lastly, Bengaluru has low vacancy–signifying its large appetite for organized retail.
For a detailed coverage and intensive interactions with our key speakers, watch out for the next issue of Shopping Centre News.
