The Hindu Business Line : Retail sector becomes hot vertical for IT vendors

Two for tango
SAP has signed up about 13-14 customers in retail over past 12-18 months including, ITC, RPG, Trent and Barista.
HP that has customers including Pantaloon, sees need for customisation.
Lifestyle has partnered with Oracle and IBM for hardware and Zensar for consulting support

A FILE PICTURE of Pantaloons store at Spencer Plaza, Chennai. - Bijoy Ghosh

Bangalore , Sept. 20

Sensing a big market in the emerging retail sector, information technology vendors - both multinationals and domestic firms are seen gearing up to tap the new found opportunity. Billed as a sunrise industry, retail has already attracted the interest of the country's big corporates even as India has emerged as the top destination for global giants.

According to IT vendors, the newer entrants in retail are seen firming up their IT budgets and have already started investing on building their basic IT infrastructure such as data management centres among others. Players such as Reliance, Bharti, Birlas and Pantaloon are already buying hardware for setting up the IT infrastructure.

Though no estimates are available about the IT market size in retail, vendors believe that the market would be pretty big, running into hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Software vendors are considering India a serious market now," said Mr Gibson Vedamani, CEO, Retailers' Association of India. "Currently," Mr Vedamani said "the Indian retailers could be investing anywhere between Rs 2-10 crore on IT adoption."

"There is lot of excitement, but a clearer picture will emerge over the next 12 months when the retail sector takes off," said Mr Pallab Talukdar, Director Marketing and Alliance, Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett Packard India. HP has already signed up customers such as Pantaloon, which has implemented business software SAP.

Mr Shantanu Ghose, Group Manager, NonStop Systems, Technology Solutions Group, HP India, believes that IT budgets of retail players would account for 5-10 per cent of their total investments.

"IT adoption in retails calls for lot of customisation, as the strategy of each player will be different. We are gearing up to meet these demands in terms of different applications, solutions architecting and costs among others," he said. HP has already started organising workshops on data management for retail players, he said.

`Retail opening up'

"Retail is opening up and we are seeing great traction," said Mr M. B. Sam, Director, Marketing, Sun Microsystems India. Sun, has already supplied hardware worth few millions to some of the big players, Mr Sam said even while declining to reveal the names.

"There's a lot of momentum", said Mr Nagaraj Bhargava, SAP India's Director for Marketing and Strategic Initiatives. "Retail was among the fastest growing verticals for SAP in India," Mr Bhargava said adding that the ERP vendor has signed up about 13-14 customers in retail over past 12-18 months including, ITC, RPG, Trent, Barista among others.

`Data management'

Mr Vinay Shroff, Head, Supply Chain Management, Pantaloon Retail India Ltd said, "We have rolled out our own SAP. A high level of data management is required in the areas of article lifecycle management, inventory management, supplier relationship management, forecasting management.

This is from the procurement side. From the selling side, we have used IT in product life cycle management, for promotions and campaigns, loyalty programmes. In India, standard ERPs are available to take care of our needs."

Mr Shyam Prasad, Head, IT Business Applications, Lifestyle International Pvt Ltd, most of the group's IT decisions are designed out of the head office in Dubai.

The Landmark Group, which owns the Lifestyle brand has over 500 stores (including four other brands) across the globe.

"There are a lot of Tier I and Tier II ERP providers. We have partnered with Oracle and with IBM for our hardware and Zensar for consulting support," Mr Prasad said.