Offline, Online, Or Both? It's Time To Play The Right Game!

Even if e-commerce has been posting growth, especially in the field of fashion, there are clear signs that the retail business will have to chip in for physical stores as well in order to chart out a proper growth path

- Tanya Krishna

While we thought that online retail was the way ahead in today’s world with India being the fastest growing ecommerce market right now, the picture isn’t really that rosy. With competition rising, several reputed and established e-commerce companies are opening physical stores.

As Ananth Narayanan, CEO, Myntra-Jabong, explains, “Fashion is one of the largest and fastest growing categories in e-commerce. Yet, it accounts for only 5% of the total fashion market currently and this is expected to reach 11-12% by 2020.” Online players opening offline stores is the new trend which is becoming prominent right now and will remain so in the years to come. However, these trends are not overruling the presence of online stores but are advocating a more ‘hybrid’ model of retail.

The Trend Triggers

The reality is that online is still only a fraction of the overall retail business and is going to be that way for the next few years at the very least. Here are the triggers driving this trend:

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