Sustainable retail: holistic development of the Indian retail sector
Student name: Ms Mansi Goyal
Guide: Dr Manipadma Datta
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Shikhar Jain
Abstract: Indian Retail industry is growing at an exponential rate. It is expected to cross 1.3 trillion USD by 2020 from the current market size of 500 billion USD. It is an industry that is largely dependent on natural resources such as water, land, energy etc., considering its growth rate and its dependence on non-renewable resources. It is imperative that this growth should be sustainable.
Retailers, being at the interface of consumers and producers, have the power to influence both the sides of the coin i.e. promoting sustainable production and encouraging sustainable consumption. This project aims at incorporating sustainability in the entire supply chain of retailers.
A few of the activities includes: Development of a supplier rating System that will facilitate retailers to work with those suppliers who are conscious of their environmental and social footprints. In a way it will make suppliers to focus on these issues considering a demand from retailer’s side. Similarly Sustainable business models will encourage retailers to imbibe sustainability into its strategies. A step into this direction is the development of sustainability reports. These reports communicate the sustainability initiatives to a company’s stakeholders. It’s a medium of communication that is transparent and bolsters an organizations commitment towards the triple bottom line.
These materials are prepared with stakeholder consultations along with the secondary research required to get the data. The current status of these projects is as follows: the supplier rating system has been prepared along with the sustainable business model and the sustainability reports are at the initial stages.
