When Snapdeal and Shoppers Stop clashed

Brick and mortar retailing still controls the majority of sales but e-commerce is seeing exponential growth

It was meant to be a discussion on Omni channel retailing, but the fashion forum held in the city turned out to be a debate between online versus offline retailers.

"We are five times of what we were last January. We are seeing double digit growth month on month. Because we are building distribution capacities month on month, we now have presence in 5000+ cities," said Amit Maheshwari, Head, Fashion Business, Snapdeal.com, at the inauguration of India Fashion Forum, 2015

Govind Shrikhande, managing director of Shoppers Stop took a dig at this and said: "...In our business we are bothered about ROC (return on capital).. ..and in those businesses (e-commerce), it is a race about going down."

When asked about the impact of e-commerce on brick and mortar retailing, Kabir Lumba, managing director, Lifestyle International, said, "in the last two years, we have seen double digit like-to-like growth across three of four formats."

Shrikhande of Shoppers Stop said the disruption in the Indian economy was still not shaping up to the challenges and hence double digit growth was slowing down in the organized brick and mortar retail space.

While Amit Maheshwari of Snapdeal mentioned that the returns were 15% in the online clothing business, BS Nagesh, founder, TRRAIN (Trust for Retailers & Retail Associates of India), pointed out the same was 1.5-3% in the organized retail business.

Lumba said, "online is not a threat but is an outcome of technology. The relation will be of compatibility. They will transfer or off-load some of the 5x growth in business to the organized retail."

Stating that it was not about online or offline tussle, Dr. Thomas Vetter, Senior VP and Global Head, Consumer Industries, SAP, said that consumer journey has already started on the web before deciding to buy online or offline.