RIL looking to drive the demand for smaller shops

Several industry statistics highlight the importance of the commercial segment in the Indian real estate ecosystem. The demand for office spaces in the country is estimated to have grown by 58% between 2011 and 2017; IBEF estimates the commercial office stock in India to have already crossed 600 million square feet. The demand for commercial properties has also increased at a healthy pace. Gross absorption is estimated to have grown to 36.4 million square feet between January and September 2018, registering a robust year-on-year increase of 26%. While the Indian economy has been rapidly digitising, many smaller businesses – particularly the neighbourhood kirana and mom-and-pop stores – are still relatively untouched by the ongoing digital revolution. As such, they are not able to fully realise the benefits that digital solutions bring. This dynamic, however, is expected to change soon. MukeshAmbani’s Reliance has announced its plans to launch a new e-commerce platform to empower retailers across the country – starting with over 1.2 million retailers in Gujarat. The platform will be jointly launched by Reliance Retail and Reliance JioInfocomm and will help offline retailers expand into the online space, thus driving up the demand for smaller brick-and-mortar shops and retail stores in India.