The Indian organized retailing is witnessing a positive growth. It is evident from the entry of leading domestic business houses and global retail giants into this upcoming segment. The increasing spending power of consumers, their willingness to experiment and experience new age retailing, made this segment very lucrative. The leading conglomerates are investing billions in setting up back-end and front-end operations. They are adopting different retail formats that suit their line of operations and ensure their reach to potential customers. Hence, this article aims to provide a reality check on the performance of the different retail formats adopted and the factors that affect their survival and success. It also intends to discuss the viable strategies to enable the retail formats to achieve success.

The present upsurge of the Indian organized retail fuels the emergence of different retail formats who are eager to make hay when the sun shines. Each player chose a different retail format to position and to communicate to the target segment. Most of the retail formats are still in embryonic stage, as the buzz of organized retail in India has just taken off. RPG Retailing pioneered the organized retail and chose to follow the food and groceries retail format (Self-service) and attained pioneering success. It has targeted Socio-Economic Classification (SEC) as A1, A, B and located its stores accordingly. Later on, Subhiksha entered the fray and chose the discount store format (with counter service). It chose to target SEC C, D, E and sold the products which offered considerable discount and also located its stores accordingly (most of the Subhiksha stores are located in the residential areas of the chosen target segment). But, the actual momentum of the organized retail picked up when Big Bazaar entered into the fray. It has adopted the hypermarket model which sells range of products from vegetables to consumer durables. This model is different from the other players who primarily focus on selling food and groceries. It targets the entire pyramid of SEC (A, B, C, D and E) and mostly sell local or unknown brands. This is different from the other players who initially played a stockist's role of selling well-known brands under one roof and offer several value-added services in order to provide a unique retailing experience. Reliance has recently entered the industry with the single or limited line retail format in which it intends to sell all the products in a different retail store format. It has rolled out the first retail format `Reliance Fresh', which primarily sells vegetables and daily use groceries such as dairy and bakery products.

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