Has e-commerce boom really hampered the growth of brick-and-mortar retail?
Narendra Modi's BJP came to power. As then-secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (Dipp), Kant was presiding over a stakeholder discussion on whether multi-brand retail should be allowed in India.
Over a decade since, Piyush Goyal has, yet again, highlighted his government's concerns over the growth of ecommerce in India — that there will be social disruption, there is predatory pricing in ecommerce, and the number of mobile stores in the country has declined over the past 10 years. He is concerned — and rightly so — about the fate of millions of small retailers and kirana stores in the country.
The point that I made to Kant in 2014 still stands: ecommerce offers consumers a much wider variety of products, whether coloured socks, numbered swimming goggles or air-purifiers. It benefits both sellers and buyers. Customers in Tier-2 and -3 towns access a wider variety of products online, without relying on someone to go to a metro to purchase it. Sellers find buyers across the country.
Without ecommerce, you won't be able to buy Solapuri Shengdana Chutney in Lucknow, and someone in Solapur won't be able to buy a Lucknowi Chikankari kurti. eCommerce has also spawned an entire industry of D2C online-only brands that, in many cases, 'make in India', and have spawned a supporting infrastructure of storage, packaging, delivery and online advertising, and, hence, substantial employment.
Goyal should back his conjecture regarding employment with data. On his comments about cloud kitchens as a threat for
