The Indian retail space is abuzz of late and foreign retailers such as Alibaba and Amazon are eyeing the Indian retail pie, following the successful opening of IKEA.

To discuss the outlook for this space going forward CNBC-TV18 spoke with industry experts Lalit Agarwal, CMD of V-Mart Retail, Rama Bijapurkar, consumer economy expert, Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak Advisors and Vishal Gutka of PhillipCapital.

The Indian consumption story has a very long way to go and 60 percent of the country's GDP is consumption driven, said Bijapurkar.

"The global players are eyeing the consumption space and not betting on retail because the opportunity in that space is really huge in India," she said.

According to Bijapurkar, both the ecommerce and offline retail spaces will co-exist.

"The competition if any to the brick and mortar basically comes from lack of amenities, parking, space etc," she said. "On the other hand, the consumers will continue to chase value irrespective of the medium."

India is in a sweet spot as far as consumption demographics are concerned, said Singhal. Rapid urbanisation across social economic strata bodes well for the consumption space, he said.

According to him, the Indian retail would be $1.25 trillion by 2025 and food and grocery would have the largest share.

"There would be enough opportunities for both the organised and unroganised players," said Singhal.

The retail space is buzzing with every online player wanting to get into offline space and vice-versa, said Agarwal. “So, it is the multichannel, the omnichannel which is going to exist, and offline will be the base of whatever consumption happens at the ground level,” he said, adding that the brick and mortar space will continue to dominate the retail space.

First Published:Aug 21, 2018 1:23 PM IST