Delhi’s Select Citywalk mall is probably one of the most popular shopping destinations in India. Located at Saket District Centre, in Saket, New Delhi, it is spread across 6 acres and has 1,300,000 sq ft of retail development space.
The mall houses around 150 retail stores representing 500 major Indian and international brands. For a avid shopper, it is nothing but a wonderland of sorts.
But even for such a large and popular shopping mall, it looks like popularity of online shopping is posing a threat.
Now, in a move that could be termed as ironic, Select Citywalk mall may themselves enter e-commerce space. The company is currently in the process of coming up with their strategy, for which they have tied up with Technopak Advisors and another Bangalore based Tech company. The reason it is ironic is because they are entering into a space, which is actually becoming a big threat to them!
According to the report, Select Citywalk will go the popular marketplace model, in which existing shops in their mall can sell their brands alongside products marketed by the mall themselves. Citywalk also plans to enter into separate deals with brands for putting them online.
However, the most interesting aspect if that Citywalk plans to keep the product pricing same as what are available in offline mall stores. Majority of Indian buy online because they get great discounts and deals as compared to offline stores.
If Citywalk plans to keep the product pricing online similar to what they offer offline as well, then it will be extremely difficult to compete with the likes of Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra and others. People will still prefer buying from incumbents due to price advantage.
This is similar to brands who have opened up their online stores, but have seen no success in selling their own products.
In our view, if Select Citywalk wants to be successful in their e-commerce foray, they have to definitely play the pricing game, where products are offered at better prices if purchased online.
At this point, all these are “ifs” and “buts” – Even with the tremendous growth, Indian Ecommerce space is still evolving. Let’s wait and see what happens!