India: A new frontier for Shopping Malls

The emergence of a mall culture and development of malls should come across as a positive development .With all the major retailers planning to double the number of stores and the retail space that they will need in the next three years, availability of real estate space will be a key enabler for growth.
Many of the Indian cities are choking under rapid urbanization. And Central Business Districts (CBDs) in many cities today are not capable of supporting the massive growth plans of retailers. High cost of retail space is certainly a cause for concern. Real estate laws in India are archaic in nature and impede the retailing development.
India is one of the happening countries for retail growth and development due to its rapidly expanding economy. A lot of the demand for increased retail goods and services is due to a booming middle class that no longer lives in traditional extended households because there is an increase in work relocation and job opportunities particularly in the service and high tech industries.
WE all know that, just ten years ago, shopping centers did not even exist in India. and today there is more than 60 million square feet of retail in various stages of completion throughout the country and many predict that within two to four years there will be as many as 300 shopping centers in India.
One of the exciting things about our culture is the people’s amazing capability to
take the best of other cultures and blend with their own to create something new and dynamic such as the “Bollywood” film industry. WE pick up and learn very fast from others, whether its their technology advances or their mistakes.
The Indian retailers and developers really do not want foreigners to come in and develop their industry for them. They want to learn from them so that they themselves can develop their business on their own terms and best suited to our unique needs. So you shall see a lot of local vernacular touch in all our endeavors, whether it is Mc Donalds- aloo tickii burger or our traditional local artisans in the mall, but you can see the personal modification to what ever we learn from the west.
Some of the challenges we face today include lack of available land, poor infrastructure, protecting existing Indian owned retail chains from foreign competition, changes to the existing social and cultural structure due to increasing wealth of the Indian middle class and the desire to add jobs and improve the standard of living for a relatively youthful population.
The Indian retail and real estate industry is today moving at a rapid pace without regard to the importance of using market research adequately, which will become a challenge when this industry matures. Although developers and retailers do get the intensive research done but eventually give importance to feedback from local people.