Innovation in Rural Retail: a New Focus

Abstract

The market potential of the poor in both rural and urban India has become a powerful motif. India's poor are increasingly represented and celebrated as an emerging market, a 'fortune at the bottom of the pyramid' as C.K. Prahalad has famously put it. As the state looks to maintain recent levels of growth and as businesses look to expand rural markets for goods and services in the fields of health-care, energy, telecom and banking, the large rural population of the country has drawn the attention of organized retailers looking for new areas of growth. Recognizing the huge potential of this untapped market, a slew of supermarket chains, including those from top business houses such as the Tata group, ITC and DCM Shriram Consolidated Limited (DSCL) have set up shop. With home-grown chains such as Reliance Fresh and Spencer's buying farm produce directly from farmers (and even multinational chains such as Wal-Mart, which has entered India Through its tie-up with Bharti Enterprises).The paper explores the interventions in the rural market, to increase the inclusive growth, which ultimately will result in a stable social structure.