Letters: Retail reality

Contrast two recent stories on the retail sector in your newspaper. Thomas Varghese who heads the retail business for the Aditya Birla Group (“Rentals are down and revenue-shares are in”, April 10) is convinced that his company will do well because his colleagues are now tracking sales; that rentals will come down because mall-owners don’t have deep pockets while he has; that he has worked out the supply-chain logistics that continue to dog every other big retailer in the country. The country’s largest retailer, Kishore Biyani, on the other hand, is restructuring his business to be able to raise cash to be able to fund his company (‘Pantaloon goes in for mega business recast’, April 12). If, after all these years, even the biggest retailer is in trouble — you don’t even hear much of Reliance Retail nowadays — what hope do the others have? Bharti-Wal-Mart has done the right thing by rolling out its retail network slowly, while it understands the business. Varghese’s comments that kiranas lack the breadth which organised retail has is also not borne out by the facts — he needs to visit some organised retail stores to see they don’t even keep the merchandise the kiranas keep, the idea of them having ‘mor’ stock is a joke.

Shikha Trivedi, New Delhi