Modern trade to jump five fold to $200 billion by 2021: BCG

MUMBAI: The organised retail sector will grow five fold in the next five-seven years and touch the $200 billion mark, showed a Boston Consultancy Group report.

"The organised retail sector in the country would grow from the current $40 billion to $200 billion in the next five-seven years," report released at the CII national retail-FMCG summit today stated.

"We find transformation in FMCG and retail is critical to the profitable growth of the sector," BCG senior partner and director, Abheek Singhi said.

The study covered 45 companies in the country. "We found that close to 57 per cent believe the world is going more uncertain going forward, while 71 per cent of executives believe they do have idea but they lack defined action plan," he said.

"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," said investor and Rare Enterprises founder Rakesh Jhunjhunwala in his keynote address.

Admitting that the retail sector has not done well in the last 10 years, he said it will do better now as retailers have realised that store level profitability is more important than the supply chain.

Terming this year as bullish for the sector owing to rise in income level, he said availability of a wide range of brands gives consumers more options to choose from.

"FMCG is typically the last sector to slow down and over the past three years, as sector after sector slowed down," ITC executive director for FMCG businesses Kurush Grant said.

Over the last year, FMCG has also come under pressure and hence what is needed by the industry is to think about reviving itself, Grant said, adding recovering will be faster than other sectors.