Pre-election caution among consumers have impacted demand in the second half of the fiscal year 2018-19, said Lalit Agarwal, CMD at V-Mart. Barring festival days of Diwali and Holi, demand remained muted in FY19, he added.

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“They (people) have a little bit of fear in their mind about their sustainability of the income – what will happen post the elections, what kind of party is going to come in, what will be the economic scenario of the country. That is how I think people are waiting for the consumption to do,” said Agarwal in conversation with Priya Seth in CNBC-TV18’s segment ‘It’s The Economy’.

“There is some kind of fear in the self-employed class people who don’t want to invest too much money into their business and not take too much of a risk into the business and that is getting converted into the consumption,” he added.

In terms of demand shortfall, Agarwal said, “We are not seeing any pockets of any particular area. We are seeing it generally overall except tier I. tier I has not yet shown that kind of softness but otherwise we have seen the softness across the territories.”

Speaking about his FY20 outlook, he further mentioned, “I keep speaking that elections bring a lot of money to the small towns and that is where the money gets to the smaller consumers and these consumers are obviously going to spend, celebrate more and then a good stable government will bring in more confidence in terms of spending and consumption. I see a good 2020 coming in.”

Key highlights:

-Seeing soft demand in 1H & 2H FY19

-Have not seen too much demand after Diwali

-Demand shortfall is overall, not confined to specific pockets

-Stable govt will bring more confidence in terms of consumption or spending

-Aspire for a 20% YoY growth

-Have already opened 41 stores in FY19 so far

-Want to open more than 50 stores In FY20

-Do not fear a player like 7-Eleven entering India

-Want to retain margin at 10%

-Will pass on margin surpluses to consumers