Retailing Trends in India

Retail Trends Index

2006-08-20T13:26:00.000+05:30

This Retail trend blog exposes new managers to the challenges in the retail management . This one point knowledge bank encourages both new & experienced channel & retail industry managers to exchange their learning & experiences . For managers who want detail information about any particular area there is a list of reference books & articles too.

Effective Sales Management

2006-04-30T13:30:00.000+05:30

This one point sales knowledge bank encourages both new & experienced sales managers to exchange their learning & experiences . For managers who want detail information about any particular area there is a list of reference books & articles too .

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INDIAN RETAIL INDUSTRY - insights

2006-02-25T21:26:00.000+05:30

INDIA – A Vibrant Economy & Resplendent Market

· 4 th Largest economy in PPP terms after USA, China & Japan
· To be the 3 rd largest economy in terms of GDP in next 5 years.
· 2 nd fastest growing economy in the world.
· The US $ 580 billion economy grew 8.2 percent in the year 03-04
· Among top 10 FDI destinations
· Stable Government with 2 nd stage reforms in place
· Growing Corporate Ethics (Labour laws, Child Labour regulations, environmental protection lobby, intellectual and property rights, social responsibility).
· Major tax reforms including implementation of VAT.
· US $ 130 billion investment plans in infrastructure in next 5 years
· 2 nd Second most attractive developing market, ahead of China
· 5th among the 30 emerging markets for new retailers to enter

A country with the largest young population in the world- over 867 million people below 45 years of age!
More English speaking people in India than of in the whole of Europe
300 million odd middle class - the Real consumers - is catching the attention of the world
With over 600 million effective consumers by 2010 India to emerge as one of the largest consumer markets of the world by 2010.

Retailing in India

Total Consumer Spend in the Year 03-04 – INR 9300 billion ( USD 375 billion) growing over 5% annually
Retail sales – 55% at INR 280 billion (USD 205 billion)
Organised Retail – Only 3% but growing at 30%
Organised retail to cross INR 1000 billion mark by 2010
INR 200 billion investment in the pipeline
Top 6 cities account for 66% of total organized retailing.
Overwhelming acceptance of modern retail formats.

Fashion drives organized retail.

2004 figures :

Organised retail : Rs. 280 billion
Clothing, Textiles & Fashion accessories: 39%
Footwear 9%
Jwellery & watches 7%
Mobile hand sets & accessories 3%
Health & Beauty (including services) 2%
Food & Grocery 18%
Durables 13%
Books, Music & Gifts 3%
Home 3%
Pharma 2%
Entertainment 1%

2005 Projection for Organised Retail – Rs. 350 billion

Indian Retail – Where it stands

Five Reasons why Indian Organized Retail is at the brink of Revolution :
> Scalable and Profitable Retail Models are well established for most of the categories
> Rapid Evolution of New-age Young Indian Consumers
> Retail Space is no more a constraint for growth
> Partnering among Brands, retailers, franchisees, investors and malls
> India is on the radar of Global Retailers Suppliers

Looking Ahead
Many strong regional and national players emerging across formats and product categories Most of these players are now geared to expand far more rapidly than the initial years of starting up Most have regained / improved profitability after going through their respective learning curves

Malls in India
· A decade ago – not a single mall
· A year ago – less than half a dozen
· Today – 40 malls
· 2 years from now – 300 malls

INDIA RETAIL BY 2006-07

50 million sq ft of quality space under development
7 major cities to account for 41 million sq ft development
300 malls, shopping centres and multiplexes under construction
To open 35 hypermarkets, 325 large department stores, 1500 supermarkets and over 10,000 new outlets

5 Principles to Cement Customer Trust

2006-02-25T19:09:00.000+05:30

Have you ever second-guessed yourself, on purpose? I imagine all of us have from time to time. Sometimes it is about a decision we have made or those we fail to make. Frequently, in our minds, we hold ourselves accountable. There are times, I am sure, that every single one of us have said, "If I only had it to do all over again", I would have done such and such differently.

But life does not allow us that option. I believe that everything happens for a reason to allow us to grow and become the person we are to be, with our faults and assets, failures as well as accomplishments. We are here "on purpose!"

My purpose in my business is to encourage organizations and people to find a way to trust again. "Trust is probably the most basic human value," says Fred Rogers,

Nothing is harder to regain, than lost trust.

I believe people do business with people they trust. I believe people do business with people who are knowledgeable, efficient and will deliver what they promise.

As the holiday season approaches, I am already hearing retailers questioning what type of season it will be. The downfall of large corporations looms large and the stock market is the fastest roller coaster ride I have ever seen. And even Martha Stewart is starting to look a little tarnished. So the question is, who will the consumer plan to spend their carefully allocated holiday dollars with this year.

I believe it will be with those businesses that have earned the customers trust.

How did those companies develop and cement that trust? They promised and delivered the following principles of building and maintaining trust.

T - Truth

Trust and solid relationships are built on telling the truth. Companies must maintain this principle both with internal and external customers. It is imperative that this value is represented in everything a company does. We have seen how the lack of solid ethics can crumble even the largest of companies.

R - Responsibility

Trust is built when everyone within an organization realizes what their responsibilities are and that they are held accountable for them. Choose to schedule reviews quarterly for every member of the company to make sure they are aware of their responsibilities. Take ownership of mistakes and be diligent to find ways to make corrections.

U - Unselfishness

Trust is built when employees give of their time and talent in the workplace and do it, unselfishly. Customers appreciate the employee who goes out of their way to satisfy the customer. Customers don't appreciate hearing how badly the employee wants to go home, or how they didn't get a break, or how awful their schedule is.

S - Security

Trust is built on a feeling of security. Good lighting in the parking lot and store entrance, fitting rooms with doors that lock, employees that handle ringing up a sale with accuracy, and alarm systems that are visible are all ways to make the customer feel safe in your place of business. Employees want to feel a sense of job security and that they are appreciated for the job they do.

T - Teamwork

Trust is built when everyone within the organization feels a sense of ownership. How well do your employees work together? Are they willing to go out of their way to help each other out? Do the managers roll up their sleeves to help when the workload is overwhelming? Is there a reward system in place that encourages employees to want to excel? Most importantly, are there cheerleaders within the organization to keep the momentum going when times are tough?

We are at a time when gaining a customers' trust is critical. It is a daily process, on purpose. It is a time to maximize potential, ethically and to deal with conflict and problems, with credibility.

It is a time not to look back but look forward. It is a time not to say, "if only", but to daily say, "I am proud of what we did". And we achieved it, on purpose!

About the Author
Anne M. Obarski is the "Eye on Retail Performance". She is an author, professional speaker, retail consultant and Executive Director of Merchandise Concepts. Anne works with companies who are performance, profit and people focused and she helps leaders see their businesses through their customers’ eyes. Anne’s mystery shoppers have secretly "snooped" over 2000 stores searching for excellence in customer service. To reach Anne or learn more, visit www.merchandiseconcepts.com.

Indian Retail Industry 2005

2006-01-15T18:24:00.000+05:30

The retailing industry in India estimated at INR 930,000 crores (2003-04) is expected to grow at 5% p.a. and the organized retailing is well on its way to become an INR. 350 billion market by 2005 according to INDIA RETAIL REPORT 2005 : An IMAGES-KSA Technopak study released at the KSA Retail Summit 2005 here on Friday by Mr. Kishore Biyani, Manging Director of Pantaloon Retail, India's largest retailer. “ The size of the organized retailing market stood at Rs. 280 billion in 2004 , thereby, making up a mere 3% of the total retailing market. Moving forward, organized retailing is projected to grow at the rate of 25%-30% p.a. and is estimated to reach an astounding INR 1000 billion by 2010. Further, its contribution to total retailing sales is likely to rise to 9% by the end of the decade,” said Mr. Arvind Singhal, Chairman, KSA Technopak.

Share of Organised Retail

	1999	2002	2005
Total Retail (in billion INR)	7000	8250	10000
Organized Retail (in billion INR)	50	150	350
% Share of Organized Retail	0.70%	1.80%	3.5%

According to Mr. Amitabh Taneja, Group Head, IMAGES & Director, International Council of shopping Centres (ICSC - India) and Indian Retail School, currently the fashion sector in India commands a lion's share in the country's organised retail pie. This is in line with the retail evolution in other parts of the world, where fashion led the retail development in the early stages of evolution and was followed by other categories like Food & Grocery, Durables etc. The report covers major sectors like Apparel, Footwear & Sportswear, Jwellery, watches, Health & Beauty (including services), Food & Grocery, Consumer Electronics, Mobile handsets & peripherals, Books, Music & Gifts, Home, Entertainment, and oil.

Detailing reasons why Indian organized retail is at the brink of Revolution the IMAGES-KSA report says that the last few years have seen rapid transformation in many areas and setting scalable and profitable retail models across categories. Indian consumers are rapidly evolving and accepting modern formats overwhelmingly. Retail Space is no more a constraint for growth. India is on the radar of Global Retailers and suppliers / brands world-wide are willing to partner with retailers here. Further, large Indian corporate groups like Tata, Reliance, Raheja, ITC, Bombay Dyeing, Murugappa & Piramal Groups etc and also foreign investors and private equity players are firming up plans to identify investment opportunities in the Indian retail sector. The quantum of investments is likely to sky-rocket as the inherent attractiveness of the segment lures more and more investors to earn large profits. Investments into the sector are estimated at INR 20 – 25 billion in the next 2-3 years, and over INR 200 billion by end of 2010.

Stocks in the retail sector are also becoming increasingly attractive from an investor's point of view. Successful development of value based concepts as well as development of retail space in smaller cities and towns shall drive the organized retail into the next levels of cities. Retailers have responded to this phenomenon by introducing contemporary retail formats such as hypermarkets and supermarkets in the new pockets of growth. Prominent ‘tier-II' cities and towns which are witnessing a pick-up in activity include Surat, Lucknow, Dehra Dun, Vijaywada, Bhopal, Indore, Vadodara, Coimbatore, Nasik, Bhubaneswar, Varanasi and Ludhiana among others.

With consumption in metros already being exploited, manufacturers and retailers of products such as personal computers, mobile phones, automobiles, consumer durables, financial services etc are increasingly targeting consumers in tier II cities and towns. In addition, petro-retailing efforts of petroleum giants scattered through out the country's landscape have also ensured that smaller towns are also exposed to modern retailing formats.

On the supply side, mall development activity in the small towns is also picking up at a rapid pace, thereby, creating quality space for retailers to fulfill their aggressive expansion plans. Thus, the ‘retail boom', 85% of which has so far been concentrated in the metros is beginning to percolate down to smaller cities and towns. The contribution of these tier-II cities to total organized retailing sales is expected to grow to 20-25%.

Favorable demographic and psychographic changes relating to India's consumer class, international exposure, availability of increasing quality retail space, wider availability of products and brand communication are some of the factors that are driving the retail in India. Over the last few years, many international retailers have entered the Indian market on the strength of rising affluence levels of the young Indian population along with the heightened awareness of global brands and international shopping experiences and the increased availability of retail real estate pace.

Development of India as a sourcing hub shall further make India as an attractive retail opportunity for the global retailers. Retailers like Wal-Mart, GAP, Tesco, JC Penney, H&M, Karstadt-Quelle etc stepping up their sourcing requirements from India and moving from third-party buying offices to establishing their own wholly owned / wholly managed sourcing & buying offices shall further make India as an attractive retail opportunity for the global players. Buying volumes for many of these players are already in the range of INR 10-20 billion per year, with reported plans to step up to INR 100-150 billion within the next 3-4 years.

Manufacturers in industries such as FMCG, consumer durables, paints etc are waking up to the growing clout of the retailers as a shift in bargaining power from the former to the latter becomes more discernible. Already, a number of manufacturers in India, in line with trends in developed markets, have set up dedicated units to service the retail channel. Also, instead of viewing retailers with suspicion, or as a ‘necessary evil' as was the case earlier, manufacturers are beginning to acknowledge them as channel members to be partnered with for providing solutions to the end-consumer more effectively.

Though lucrative opportunities exist across product categories, food and grocery, never-the-less, presents the most significant potential in the Indian context as consumer spending is highest on food. Further, ‘wet groceries' i.e. fresh fruits and vegetables is the most promising segment within food and grocery as very few organized retailers have tapped this opportunity inspite of wet groceries being the preferred choice of most Indian households.

The next level of opportunities in terms product retail expansion lies in categories such as apparel, jewellery and accessories, consumer durables, catering services and home improvement. These sectors have already witnessed the emergence of organized formats though more players are expected to join the bandwagon. Some of the niche categories like Books, Music and Gifts offer interesting opportunities for the retail players.

The IMAGES-KSA projections indicate that by 2015, India will have over 550 million people under the age of 20 – reflecting the gargantuan opportunities possible in the kids and teens retailing segment.

Wholesale trading is another area, which has potential for rapid growth. German giant Metro AG and South African Shoprite Holdings have already made headway in this segment by setting up stores selling merchandise on a wholesale basis in Bangalore and Mumbai respectively. These new-format cash-and-carry stores attract large volumes from a sizeable number of retailers who do not have to maintain relationships with multiple suppliers for all their needs.

Rural Retailing : Of late, India's largely rural population has also caught the eye of retailers looking for new areas of growth. ITC launched the country's first rural mall ‘ Chaupal Sagar' , offering a diverse product range from FMCG to electronics appliance to automobiles, attempting to provide farmers a one-stop destination for all of their needs. There has been yet another initiative by the DCM Sriram Group called the ‘ Hariyali Bazaar' , that has initially started off by providing farm related inputs and services but plans to introduce the complete shopping basket in due course. Other corporate bodies include Escorts, and Tata Chemicals (with Tata Kisan Sansar) setting up agri-stores to provide products/services targeted at the farmer in order to tap the vast rural market.

Commenting on the Rural Retailing chapter in INDIA RETAIL REPORT 2005, Mr. Adi B. Godrej, Chairman, The Godrej Group (India's one of the leading corporate majors) said that his group had also launched the concept of agri-stores named 'Adhaar', which served as one-stop shops for farmers selling agricultural products such as fertilisers & animal feed and also providing farmers knowledge on how to effectively utilise these products. "There are 8 stores already operating in Maharashtra and Gujarat and further expansion is very much on the cards. he added.

FDI could indeed do a lot in this sector as entry of international retailers would bring in the required expertise to set the supply chain in place which would result in elimination of wastage, better prices and quality for consumers and higher income for farmers besides of course farm produce retailing getting a facelift, said Mr. Godrej.

Tapping the fresh farm produce sector, the group plans to take its recently launched retail concept – Nature's Basket - to newer cities steadily. Godrej Group's Agro and Food division, Godrej Agrovet Ltd. (GAVL) operates the format, selling a variety of vegetables, fruits and herbs - both local and exotic thereby introducing the concept of 'farm-to-plate' to urbanites. Godrej plans to open four more Nature's Basket stores in Mumbai before taking them national. Setting up cost of a store is about INR 5-10 million and per stores sales are expected in the range of INR 30- Rs 50 million a year.

Interestingly, the world's largest corporation, Wal-mart, also had its roots in rural America. Unlike many other retailers who started from urban centres and then trickled down to rural areas, Wal-mart had started from rural areas and then came closer to cities over a period of time. Many more such concepts are likely to be tested in the future as marketers and retailers begin to acknowledge that the rural consumer is more than a ‘poor cousin' of the urban counterpart. The IMAGES KSA Report avers that these concepts are likely to go a long way in bringing a huge untapped population within the purview of organized retailing, thereby, increasing the size of the total market.

Potential for all Formats to Thrive :

Most of the global powerhouses in the retailing sector such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco etc have adopted multi-format and multi-product strategies in order to customize their product offering for distinct target segments. Similar trends are likely to be exhibited in India as all formats present prospects for growth, the Report says.

Further, with the emergence of larger store formats like superstores and hypermarkets in countries like UK, France, Germany, Spain since the 1980s and Eastern Europe more recently, traditional food retailers have been able to stock more extensive non-food ranges. In fact, Tesco, UK's leading grocer, has become the number one apparel retailer in the Czech Republic and also a major player in Hungary apart from being one of the fastest growing clothing retailers in the UK. Together with its rival, Wal-Mart-owned ASDA, Tesco is one of the food sector's most successful exponents of clothing in Europe.

The Report goes on to detail a wide variety of roadblocks that hamper the growth of otherwise upbeat scenario. A few of them are regulatory barriers, fragmented suppliers, lack of skilled personnel, differential taxation system, labour legislation and lack of ‘industry' status. Recounting some critical success factors in retail the IMAGES-KSA report emphasises that all and any solutions aught to be India-centric even as strategic and operational attributes like value proposition, service, experience, efficiency, hygiene etc. must be benchmarked with global standards. It also favours adopting an effective private label strategy and the necessity to pass on operational gains achieved to end-consumers in order to offer a superior price-value equation, thereby, competing effectively with the unorganized segment.

On the vexed issue of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) it notes that most players are cautious and have preferred to adopt a wait-and-watch attitude even as the government is expected to announce its stand on FDI in the retail sector soon.

The IMAGES-KSA report concludes highlighting key opportunities in various segments in the organized retail sector in India, which is poised for an emphatic phase of growth.

Quote from Mr. Arvind Singhal, Chairman, KSA Technopak
Retailing is well past the stage of infancy where only a handful of players like the German retailer Nanz bought international formats to virgin Indian territory, and that too, with limited scale and operations. During the late 1990s, Indian retailers underwent an experimentation phase when new formats (department stores like Shoppers' Stop & Pantaloon) and product categories (like consumer durables retailing, music retailing etc) were introduced. As the country marched into the new millennium, the organized retailing scenario began to stabilize, especially over the last 3 - 4 years when players like Big Bazaar, Barista, Pizza Hut, Shoppers' Stop etc became successful in establishing a national footprint. This was also the stage when international retailers like McDonald's, Subway etc adopted a mix of global and India-specific strategies in order to entice the local population.

Quote from Mr. Amitabh Taneja, Chief, IMAGES & Director, International Council of shopping Centres (ICSC-India) & Indian Retail School

India is now ready to leapfrog into the next stage of evolution where a large number of Indian and international retailers would build scalable models with a pan-India appeal with a view to be sustainable in the long term. Already, players are becoming profitable after having gone through their respective learning curves indicating the viability of organized retailing across formats. Opportunities are abundant, across formats and categories, as the new Indian consumer has clearly demonstrated a readiness for all organized retailing segments. Moreover, as has been the case in retail markets across the globe, the influx of foreign brands into India shall transform the retail landscape as domestic players grow bigger and become more innovative in the face of enhanced competitive pressures.

All this can only spell good news for the Indian consumers who will be inundated with a flurry of state-of-the-art products and services at reasonable prices – a state they have long craved for.

RFID is India Software Inc’s route to retail

2006-01-14T20:21:00.000+05:30

Radio Frequency Identification has become a buzzword amongst Indian software companies and most are gearing up to tap this market. R&D teams have been constituted to study the subject and to develop solutions for the global market as RFID as a concept is yet to catch on in India. Attempts are being made to increase awareness in India to highlight RFID’s benefits. Nascent market with tremendous potential The RFID market is still in a nascent stage but industry sources say that Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defence’s (DoD) mandate will drive the RFID market in a big way in 2004. Wal-Mart has asked 138 of its retail suppliers to be RFID-enabled at the case- and pallet- (racks or the wooden platform on which cases are stacked) level by January 2005. Similarly, the US DoD has asked all its suppliers to be RFID-enabled by January 2005. DoD is piloting RFID—all defence supplies to recent conflicts areas in Iraq and Afghanistan were RFID-enabled. Industry sources expect that the top hundred suppliers meeting Wal-Mart’s mandate will spend $2 billion. Assuming an initial spend of about $8 million by around a hundred Wal-Mart suppliers of which about 50 percent would be the cost of software integration, we arrive at a figure of $400 million. Similarly, DoD has annual purchases of over $120 billion. Assuming around $20 million spend per DoD supplier that’s a potential market of $1.4 billion. As these are the two biggest announcements in this space, the overall market for software services built around RFID technology is $1.8 billion in 2004. Indian labs for RFID research Many Indian IT companies have ventured into the RFID space by setting up R&D teams and labs. Patni Computer Systems set up an RFID lab eight months back. The lab is manned by supply-chain and RFID consultants and it has already delivered an RFID pilot based on Auto-ID’s RFID framework (Auto-ID or automatic ID was an initiative taken up by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that integrates into a SAP back-end for processing transactions. Dilip Dhanuka, general manager, Patni Computer Systems says, “Customers use our RFID lab to understand the impact of RFID on their business processes, to develop a prototype or to simply enhance their understanding of the areas of their business that can make use of this technology.” Wipro Technologies is setting up a lab dedicated to RFID technology. The company plans to experiment with RFID within its Electronic City campus in Bangalore. Mani Subramaniam principal consultant, Retail & CPG at Wipro Technologies says, “We have plans to RFID-enable our campus apparel store to showcase RFID and its role in the store of the future.” Wipro Technologies has tied up with US-based OATSystems to work on developing a framework that will help customers meet Wal-Mart’s standards. Infosys Technologies is contemplating a pilot within its campus to implement RFID for a better understanding of the technology. Retail to drive RFID, others verticals will pick up RFID in the retail segment, with item-level tagging of data, is expected to result in shorter queues and smoother replenishment of stock. This will ensure the quality of perishable goods, allow customised offers and promotional schemes too would be easier for retailers to implement. Dhanuka says, “Retailers will be able to make major gains in terms of product visibility, in the back rooms and on the shelf, freeing up personnel from tracking and ensuring item availability, giving them time to interact with customers. This often takes up to 70 percent of their time.” With access to real-time Point-of-Sale (PoS) data, retailers will be able to plan replenishments better and help manufacturers improve demand planning. Real-time PoS data will inform retailers as to what’s selling and what is not. The next wave After retail it will be the turn of manufacturing, distribution, logistics and security to adopt RFID. Organisations in these verticals have started piloting the technology. Dhanuka adds, “RFID can streamline just-in-time Kanban, Six Sigma and lean manufacturing strategies by tracking information at a granular level. It can ensure verification and validation of processes as well as compliance with standards and regulations in manufacturing. The technology helps improve visibility and control over raw material and critical components, leading to better synchronisation between demand and supply.” RFID’s potential in logistics is huge. It can help improve asset tracking, leading to optimum asset inventory levels, in turn reducing waiting time. It can beef up security and authentication procedures for containers and help generate audit trails of efficient shipment routes. Similarly, in the pharmaceutical sector RFID can improve raw material tracking for the manufacturing audit trail, in batch tracking and control and in product tracking for high-value or regulated drugs. Yet to reach critical mass RFID technology is at the pilot stage in most organisations even in the US and Europe. Subramaniam says, “The benefits of RFID pilot projects will start surfacing only in 2008-09. Adoption will be slow in India as the retail sector is not organised and RFID requires an organised retail sector to be successful.” Many are also sceptical about privacy issues. Sameer Parekh, managing director, Intellicon says, “RFID is still in a nascent stage and standards are being set up. It can constitute a breach of privacy as anyone having a tag reader, authorised or not, can track an object or a person wearing an RFID tag.”

The high price of RFID tags and readers is a stumbling block too. U B Praveen Rao, senior vice-president, retail distribution and consumer packaged goods, Infosys Technologies says, “A tag is priced at 10-20 cents and a reader at $500 on an average.. Mass usage will bring down the cost of readers and tags in the next two years. Besides, some RFID readers today cannot read through metal and liquids.”

iddhartha Mukherjee, vice president and head retail practice, Cognizant Technology Solutions says, “RFID standards are quite fragmented. There a debate on the level of frequency bands to be adopted and there is no standardisation in the information stored in RFID tags. It has been observed in pilots that the accuracy of tag readers has been less than 80 percent, with misreads and redundant reads being an issue. Making the tags more robust and improving read efficiencies without impacting cost will be a major challenge for tag manufacturers.”

Companies are conducting seminars to spread awareness about RFID. There’s no doubt that this is a significant opportunity for India Software Inc.. and some of the biggest software exporters are already in the race, looking at RFID as a means to provide additional value to their clients in retail. Over time, as RFID usage spreads to other verticals, knowledge of this technology and experience in executing projects in this space will become a necessity for Indian software houses.

RFID primer

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) lets you automatically collect product, place, time or transaction data without human intervention or error. It can be used for tracking animals, vehicles, goods and military equipment. An RFID tag attached to the tracked object has a built-in antenna. The tag reader transmits a low power radio signal that is received by the tag. Using the energy it gets when it enters the reader’s radio field; the tag briefly converses with the reader for verification and the exchange of data. Once the reader receives data from the tag it forwards the same to RFID integration middleware for processing and management. The distance at which a tag can be traced depends on the frequency of the tag.

Company	Initiative
Patni Computer	Systems Patni's Lab has delivered an RFID pilot that integrates with a SAP back-end for processing transactions. It has successfully delivered a complete Animal Tracking System for an overseas customer to track farm animals.
Wipro Technologies	It has been associated with the Auto-ID lab at MIT for the last two years. Wipro Technologies is among the first Indian companies to become a member of the Electronic Product Code (EPC), a unit of the Uniform Code Council that oversees the development of standards behind the development of RFID in retail and consumer product goods. It is setting up a lab to study RFID and plans to try out the technology in its Electronic City campus at Bangalore. The company is working on a pilot project with a UK-based retail company and is talking to three other customers in the US and Europe.
Infosys Technologies	One of the founding members of EPC. It undertakes consulting on areas where clients can effectively implement RFID. Infy is working with a US-based logistics player in the RFID space.
Intellicon	Intellicon sells retail solutions from Tag Master, Zebra and MIRC in India. It worked on a pilot project for BEL Bangalore in the RFID space three years ago where tags were installed on employee buses. Buses inside the BEL campus were tracked with the aim of gauging employee punctuality.

RFID applications and frequencies used
Frequency range of a tag	Used for
125-135 kHz	Animal tracking and keeping a track over beer kegs.
13.56 MHz	Library automation
862 to 928 MHz	Retail stores.
2.45 GHz	Vehicle tracking over toll bridges.

Retail Trends

2006-01-12T13:25:00.000+05:30

LONGING FOR LEISURE: More Money, Less Time
Materialism, though still in full swing, is losing its momentum. As Americans spend more and more time working, they’re spending less time living. The acquisition of status symbols, a bulging portfolio and all the personal perfection that money can buy has become a treadmill that many are jumping off because there is no time to enjoy those things – and they are exhausted.

Counter Trend: Enjoying the Time of My LifeThe desire to work harder to acquire more to enjoy is giving way to the desire to work less to reclaim the time that is our lives. “Working harder forever” is being replaced by a new mantra “enjoying the time of my life.”

MORPHING CULTURE: Forming New “Family”
Singles outnumber couples; legislators and courts are redefining "marriage”; oldsters are living together; long-marrieds are getting divorced; legal “living” contracts are in the offing; serial monogamy is one by-product of longevity; older children living at home; more single mothers; acceptance of family planning via adoption, science or surrogates; friends are like family – or preferred over family. A revolution is in full swing via a cultural splintering that erases lines and “shoulds.” The desire for “home” continues, but what home is may change many times for individuals during their lives. Watch for a rapid evolution in the way families take shape and new communities take root and thrive, possibly resulting in dramatic effects on social, political, medical, and economic infrastructures.

Counter Trend: ‘Till Death Do Us Part
Adherence to previously sanctioned life partnerships and lifestyles. Traditional marriage vows, covenant marriages, abstinence until marriage, courtship, renewal of wedding vows, focus on family activities, values, reunions. Depending upon the satisfaction and success of a morphing culture, traditional marriage/family views could lead to polarization.

INCREASING OPTIMISM: Life is Good
Upswing in volunteerism, grassroots groups; nations realizing significance of collaboration; agencies working together; neighborhood improvement groups “taking back the streets;” euphoria at routing out the bad guys in business; belief that the good guys will “win the war” (i.e. America is the greatest country on earth – encompassing beliefs that things are getting better.) Look for this renewed sense of optimism to translate into choices impacting lifestyle as well, including automotive and product design, interiors and fashion. Look for an upbeat approach to color and lively new color combinations.

Counter Trend: Deepening Cynicism
Who do you trust – no one! Watch for upswing in national and global skepticism. Whom can we trust? Or do we trust? Fallout from ongoing corporate scandals recently exposed, a broken medical system (that both providers and patients see as flawed and that politicians campaign on), growing disparity between rich and poor, a tenuous global economy and the understanding that safety and peace are not a given could result in people becoming even more cynical. If everything is “going to hell in a hand basket,” life becomes futile. Watch for a flattening of spirit, as people become less enthusiastic and only mildly engaged in the world around them.