New Delhi: The Commerce Ministry believes that Indian high street stores are as big threat to unorganised retailers as foreign players. But Pantaloon's Managing Director Kishore Biyani begs to disagree.
This isn't the true face of Indian retailers. Barely two per cent of retail establishments in India look like this.
According to the Union Commerce Ministry, there are close to one-and-a-half crore retailers in this country.
Addressing a congregation of retail biggies, Secretary of the Union Commerce Ministry, Ajay Dua, said that the likes of Pantaloon and Shoppers' Stop are as big a threat to unorganised retailers as foreign players looking to enter India.
"The emotions become less intense if it is domestically-owned rather than it being a foreign one. So, to that extent there is a difference that you are being displaced by a local person and not a foreign one," said Dua, Secretary, Department of Industrial policy and promotion, Union Ministry of Commerce and Industries.
That's been the view of the Union Commerce Ministry, which is now looking at ways to protect small retailers from the onslaught of organised players. But Pantaloon's Managing Director, Kishore Biyani disagrees.
He claims that his company's expansion didn't hurt unorganised players and Pantaloons has never been seen as a threat, anywhere in the country.
"We bring in a lot of local trade to partner with us. I think that helped us in creating a lot of respect for us. And nobody has ever thought that we are a threat for them," said Kishore Biyani, Managing Director, Pantaloons.
Clearly, the Left alone isn't opposing FDI in retail. Organised Indian retailers, too, are not willing to let foreign players in, not just yet.
But most of them are already making preparations to compete with the likes of Walmart and Tesco, because it might not be too long before they scale the barriers and march in its money control story... just change the headline and put.
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