Kishore Biyani - Customers need to pass time. They have 1-2 hours to pass they go to the grocery. Falguni Nayar - Customer dont have time. To save time they buy online (for non grocery?) Harsh Mariwalla - Neighbourhood grocer will always have lions share of the market. (Jio?)
It hasn't been sold because its offline. Its because it's in debt . Dmart is also offline retail company and far more profitable with just 200+ stores than any online platform in india
Acquisition was made to increase retail foot print and it’s a win-win situation for the both parties in this deal - Reliance gets to expand their retail foot print while Future can be debt free and deploy capital elsewhere.. not all brick and mortar models are loss making, come on! Few models are just not viable considering the price wars and hyper-competitive environment and the only winners in this domain are the ones who are omnichannel.
No doubt the consumer behaviour is changing but Mr.Biyani has a very practical approach. Most of the growing marketplaces today are burning cash only to acquire customers so they can move to a phygital model in the future. What’s the point of diluting your margins so much that the consumer is going to eventually get habituated to it and businesses just run on valuation but never break even? It is just not viable.
