The Dark Future of Future Retail

What used to be the “Poster boy” of supermarkets is now fighting for its survival. I guess it’s true, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall (shutdown)!” Remember those days when being able to walk in isles of shelves and hand pick what you wanted to buy from a shop was a big deal? Supermarkets, as they would be known going forward, were a foreign concept, literally. It was something only seen in Hollywood movies and cartoons. So naturally, when one fine day, a Vishal Mega Mart opened near our house, my family made a full-fledged plan to visit the store. It wouldn’t be such a big deal to the people we are now that supermarkets are quite the mainstay, but we were different people with different shops then.

This trip was less about buying things from the store and more about being in the store itself. Mine wasn’t the only family there either. My parents’ colleagues, our neighbours, my classmates from the nearby area; everyone had to be there. Any crossing of paths with these aforementioned people ended up in a very “sensible” exchange about savings, bulk purchases, discounts, and all the other bells and whistles. Me? I was occupied with our shopping cart. As fancy as this ordeal was, there was a brand more sophisticated than Vishal Mega Mart. Big Bazaar, with its fancy “mall only” presence, and for no other real reason, was considered a costlier place. Today, the same “costly supermarket” is fighting for its very survival as it gets torn by two major corporations. “What went wrong?” you might wonder. Well, that’s what you will find out as you read on.