During past few years, India has become world's the hottest retail destination. Few years ago when some builder made one or two malls measuring around 1 lakh to 2 lakh sq.ft. area, they thought they are the magnate of realty estate. But now great deal has changed and India is becoming world's one of the hottest and most attractive retail destination among 30 emerging world markets as brought out by the annual Global Retail Development Index(GRDI) cones cutively for two years.

In the present scenario, retail segment is emerging as the most prominent and organized sector in real estate India. The retail industry is likely to grow from us $ 226 bn in 2006 to 45 $350 bn in 2010. This is due to increase in retail spending of middle class to 45 $ 300 m which for ms 20% to 25% of total population of India who are also searching new and lucrative markets in Tier 2nd and Tier-3rd cities as per population norms. Statistics indicate that there is more than 440% growth in the number of malls from 2004 to 2006, number of currently operational malls is 120 and 50 million sq.ft. of quality space is under development and will create 2.5 million additional jobs directly during next 5 years.

So we are to see that what is the driving force behind this massive transformation? This can basically be attributed to increase in youth population and thus India has leapfrogging trends from bullock carts to Mercedes, computer to super computers and from small kirana shops to modern malls. Around 45 $ 22 + billion is expected in the next five years in retail and its supply chain alone, modern retailing may touch 45 $ 60-75 billion by 2011-12 whereas India still needs 350 hyper markets, 325 large departmental stores, 1500 super-markets and more than 10,000 branded stores.

This is not enough, more than 90 international brands are looking for real estate India and more than five luxury projects are being developed.

On top of this, the entry of big business groups like Reliance, Bharti, Aditya Birla, Walmart, Spinach, Shoprite, Metro Cash and Carry, Carrefour & Tesco will further fuel achvities in this field who are still waiting in the wings.

Now considerable focus is shifting to Tier-2nd and Tier-3rd cities which have untapped markets with most retailers moving there for the first time seeing lower rental & higher margins due to growing buying power in populations that have been starved of opportunity. Around 45 $ 10 billion foreign private equity has been committed to
property in India and it has focused the retail sector which is evident in Hyderabad , Bangalore, Indore, Pune, Delhi, Mysore and Aurangabad. The big players like Reliance, who has already shifted to Tier-2nd & Tier 3rd cities is tasting the fruit of success.