With an epic battle of billionaires for supremacy in one of the world’s most prolific markets and a pandemic-propelled surge in online shopping in the background, India’s nearly trillion-dollar retail market is hoping to touch 85 per cent of the pre-Covid business in the first half of the new year.
In a year when the Covid-19 carnage ripped apart the retail business, circa 2020 will best go down for the unravelling of the war between Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man, and richest Indian Mukesh Ambani for pre-eminence in the booming market that is estimated to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025.
It all started with Ambani’s Reliance Industries agreeing in August to buy assets of the nation’s second-largest retailer for `24,713 crore, just a year after Bezos’ Amazon purchased an indirect stake in the indebted Future Retail. Amazon opposed the deal, claiming it violates Future Group’s investment agreement with it.
Since then, the story has been playing out in Singapore and Indian courts, and the outcome may shape India’s retail landscape for years to come.
Amazon’s success will slow Reliance’s plans to expand its e-commerce business and the country’s largest offline retail chain while a win for Ambani, who has already armed himself with `47,265 crore of funds raised through minority stake sales in his retail venture in a matter of 45 days during Covid-19 period, will put brakes on expansion plans of the US giant.
That apart, the $854 billion (`63 lakh crore) retail sector is hoping that the first half of 2021 would bring it close to normal levels of business although industry players feel that recovery will not be possible without ‘unconventional solutions and Government support’.