 Well, up next is our keynote speaker, a retail entrepreneur, who's pioneered the concept of value fashion with a retail chain that believes in priceless fashion and makes it accessible to consumers in the interiors to Bharat. I'm talking about none other than Lalith Agarwal, founder and MD, Weemart. Well, the topic for this session is pioneering the retail revolution in India's heartland. And with this, I'd also like to welcome Dr. Anurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Exchange for Media Group and VW Business World for a discussion with Mr. Agarwal for an engaging fireside chat ahead. But with this, I'd like to humbly welcome Mr. Agarwal and Dr. Batra on the screen. Firstly, thank you so much, Mr. Agarwal, for your valuable time. How are you doing today? Thank you, Bhavna. Good afternoon, everyone. So great to have you. Well, we were just having a conversation with our leader before this. And there's so many takeaways we've been having already from the first session. And we really look forward to yours and Dr. Batra's interaction ahead. But before that, before Dr. Batra joins in, Mr. Agarwal, we'd love to know how your journey's been and we'd love to know more about you, our consumers, our viewers are waiting to hear from you. So while Dr. Batra joins us, why don't you tell us about that? Oh, thank you, Bhavna. You want me to go back to my journey and it has definitely been the most exciting journey. I can't thank God for giving me a better opportunity than being in this particular field wherein you are able to relate to so many people and so many consumers and so many vendors and so many stakeholders and ecosystem people. It is so good to touch base so many souls. So yeah, my journey definitely did start right from my childhood days when my father was running a tailor shop and I used to go into that shop while being a child. It was a fun time managing or dealing with customers those times, but yeah, gradually did get into my blood and I was able to also talk to those customers, understand retail from those point of time, but yeah, which helped me when I started this journey. I did set up another retail chain called Vishal Vigamatt in my early days and then in 2003, the Vima journey started and this is where we are. Now, we traveled the journey right from Gujarat that is the first tour that we had in Amdabad from where we started the journey and then went into Delhi and then North India and then now in penetrating into smaller towns and Uttar Pradesh, we are in a lot of consumer insight came in and then customer also got graduated and which we felt that small town is or hinterland of the small town tier two, tier three cities are the bigger Indian population towns where large amount of population lives and there's a huge piece which you could convert and change. So that is what good things had happened with us and in 2008, we took our private equity from Al-Dabrullah and then went public in 2013, now we're a listed entity. So we have been all along through targeting those value fashion segment being in that particular segment, we have customer who are aspirational as well as the middle income though low people live. People who live in those small towns usually densely populated but are not accessible to such good modern stores. We started our journey right from there and we really got a good opportunity to serve them and got a very good success out of that. So off late this year, we also took over our business operation from Arvind group, Arvind fashion limited which is called Unlimited and we also now are operating in 25 states with more than 377 stores as of now. So wonderful journey and a wonderful amount of consumers that we are in touch with. So it is so heartening to be here. Absolutely, thank you for that. You know, Mr. Agarwal, of course, Dr. Bhatra would love to join us but I believe there's an internet connection from his site. So with your permission, if I can just take forth certain questions and interest of the audience, would that be fine, Mr. Agarwal? Please go ahead. Perfect, so it was great to know about your journey and you know, as you said about setting up Vmart and what lies ahead, you know, pioneering the concept of value fashion retailing in tier two, tier three and four towns in India. Also, I'd like to know about certain challenges which were involved, you know, in setting up such a beautiful and a tremendous journey, Mr. Agarwal. We'd love to know more about that. Maha, as I said, the whole world when you start looking at an objective or a goal and you start chasing that goal and then you start believing in it, you see that most of the entire globe start coming to your help and then everyone reaches out in whatever way, in whatever form and from all the corners of the world to try and help this cause. So but yes, there has been multiple levels of what I would not call obstacles but I would call hindrances or those are the routes or the ways to go through wherein there are some traffic and there are some jams which happens. And then you get those pieces, whether it is created by yourself or created by the environment or the financial capabilities or the competitor. So there will be different environment, right from the times we started when we were small at that point of time, even arranging funds for opening a store was difficult. You collect funds from your friends and the families which you'd act as a private equity investors and then get into the business. So have that relationship, do get the relationship with your vendors where they don't recognize you, how do you get into it? How do you scale up from there? How do you build your brand? How do you develop your concept? How do you bring in technology? How do you enable technology? How do you manage a store? And then the second store and the third store and then how do you manage a warehouse and a store separately? And then how do you build team across? When we decided to go into small town definitely there was a lot of challenges. So small town itself in India had a lot of challenges, has a lot of challenges, right from the law and order to availability of basic infrastructure even like electricity connection or internet connection or finding a good space in those small town or having a logistic facility available to deliver those products at those locations would have been a great challenge. The law and order itself has been a great challenge but I think largely there is no Jungle Raj, there is even there is definitely an opportunity and there is a solution to every such kind of problems which comes your way. And we have seen the hardest of the place, the difficult most locations coming out very, very easy for us and coming out very, very good for us. So we have always seen such kind of thing. We also gone through a bad time when we took our private equity, we got some fund and we started investing heavily in our stores and we expanded little fast. And when we expanded fast, we saw things getting out of control because at that moment of time that Lehman brother crisis happened in 2009 and then we had to shut down and we realized that there are some mistakes that we did, some locations that we opened were not in our favor and we were not able to operate those and we shut down almost 10, 12 stores or single largest shutting down of stores in that particular year that we did and which made us also say no to a lot of things like not going to locations which are out of our boundaries. We approached a cluster-based model and then saying that we will not grow with external debts too much and we will grow with our more suffering internal accruals that made us do an IPO and stuff. Then we said that we will not leap out into multiple divisions, multiple lines. So we retained ourselves, we are focused into value retail philosophy. And then we said which we are not a player for a big town that's experiment small town and now we are a best value retailer providing fashion to the consumers in the tier to tier three rounds. So there are a lot of challenges that we faced from the size in which we are operating to the size that now we are operating. So what brought you here may not take you there. So there are those due different processes and different formulas and different organizational structures and different skills that you have to utilize and how do you learn those going ahead? How do you learn those being in the shape? You were not educated to do all this kind of stuff but now on the way you have to get educated and learn and then create those capability build that organizational structure and power your team, give them those kind of mindset so that this becomes from a business to an enterprise and how does that get converted right from having technology people as well as processes which makes it happen. Right, it's very interesting Mr. Agarwal to know the business dynamics from the time you started to the current time and the kind of challenges, definitely a case study in itself. So kudos to that and congratulations. Well, we'd like to move on to the next question. Over the last two years, Mr. Agarwal, every company and brand has witnessed a digital transformation across processes. We'd love to know about the journey with regards to We-Mart on the digital front. Could you throw some light on that as well? So we have been off and on definitely as you understand that the journey started all along the way when we started our journey in 2003, even at that point of time, we always realized that this business has a huge future and it should be a scalable business. So digitalization has two aspects, one believing digitalization internally to expedite and seamlessly operate internally, having those processes on digital mode and then two is digitalizing the customer front, the front end of the retail. So I think largely during those times we adopted the ERP systems right into all three in our construction stage. We wanted to understand doing things seamlessly, which helped us a lot in managing inventory and understanding consumer experience, understanding consumer preferences also. So I think a lot of analytics we do, a lot of processes we have digitally, our organization has been very keen in adopting digitalization. Now we have moved to also offering our products on the retail digital space in trying to set up our own omnichannel piece. We believe that the world is moving towards digitalization, more and more digitalization will be adopted by the new consumers which are going to come in. So more and more omnichannel approach is going to come in and so that is how we develop this app and this particular website wherein we are offering even this experience to our customer base who wants to shop both offline or offline. So we are trying to meet those digital expectations of our consumers to try and slowly come up to those but still there is a long way to cover for us. Right. Thank you so much, Mr. Agarwal. Mr. Agarwal, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. omnichannel from you and clearly the world is digital and I was looking at the stocking of inventory at Walmart in the U.S. And while digital is growing and e-commerce is now 28% of the overall detailing pie which used to be 16%, 21% back in the U.S. But the enthusiasm of the shoppers in terms of visiting stores seems to have come back in a big way. What are your predictions about that in India? While we talk of D2C brands, we talk of e-commerce, we talk omnichannel, but there is a certain experience at every retail outlet and consumers seem to be wanting that even more in a digital world. What do you have to say about that? So Anurag, you are absolutely right. When one world becomes too much, people want to opt out for another world and the different world which they are used to. And habitually people have been used to the physical and the brick and mortar world and that will definitely remain and especially with the kind of audience which we kind of cater to. That audience is largely the small town, middle and the lower middle income group. The lower middle income group are the people who earn between 30,000 rupees to 50,000 rupees per month. For them buying multiple times is not an option buying. They only buy two or three times for the fashion need that they do. So for them, I think still digital is a luxury or something to look at, but not experienced and not buy from, but still things are moving faster. Still those people rely heavily on their own experience because for them even going to a physical store is taking an outward journey for their family. It's a visit, it's an outing, it's an experience which they also want. So that is definitely going to be there. We have seen the high growth in the people coming back to our retail stores, coming in huge numbers, back to the similar pre-COVID levels once again. And I think that is going to be there. Anyway, people are tired of physical or digital. But parallely, we need to believe that both the worlds has to exist. Both the worlds will be there. People are getting, and more and more millennials are getting more impatient. More and more millennials just want now and right now and today. So those fundamental habits will also catch up to some of those audiences. And whenever those audiences have those and there are certain need-based, also need-based requirement or need-based customer who is also there either by a geography, he's not in the right location where he can get those products or by a particular timing that he cannot do it, he will definitely want to avail those services even online because today digital or having been on the phone is not a new thing, it's not a luxury anymore. So it becomes a day-to-day phenomenon. We should all the retailers has to be prepared to cater to both the worlds simultaneously. They never will the digital channel become a majority of the consumption. It will always be at the minority level, but it will slowly gradually keep growing from what today, it may be around 2, 3% in India could grow up to 10% going forward in the next few years. Thank you so much for reassuring that physical stock and physical retailing at least for the foreseeable future seems attractive to shoppers and people who want to retail buying experience. My second question to you, sustainability has become very, very important, as I said, care for the planet. So the supply chains being sustainable, the brands that you source from your own in-store brands or private labels as we call them, where are they manufactured? How was the facility in Bangladesh where they're being manufactured or in China or in Vietnam? So consumers today when they buy at every level, but sometimes they look at the supply chain to be able to look at if the supply chain partner have the same value system in terms of sustainability. What do you have to say to this trend? So Anurag Pandemic has really made people much more aware and much more aware about their own ethos, their own culture, their own value system, their family value systems, their religion value systems and which has always been in Indian tradition, at least people who are Hindus or people who have been following Gita and Vedas, there have been a lot of speaking about all these value systems on retaining and taking everyone together, everything together, including environment, society and also the world. So I think more and more awareness is leading into more and more requirement for the consumers in terms of sustainable or ethical retailer or ethical product, responsible retailer. So more and more those lines are coming in as a retailer, one has to start looking into it and it should always be looked at as we need to know that we are not here only to earn out of this earth, but also protect the earth and continue it for our future generation. So every retailer, every brand manufacturer has to do it. At Vmart we have an ESG compliance retailer company where we report our, we also report it to ESG. We look at the environment, we want to look our vendors into the environment, not pollute too much, reuse stuff, don't create too much of waste, have the energy, save the energy to try and produce or save the water to try and produce and even use some recycling materials to product and then bring in some product on the shelf. So we are focusing on those lines, whether it is the vendors operating in India, 90, 95% of our productions are in India and we have taken much care that the vendors are also compliant and also are not bringing in child labor are also not bringing in those bad or say improper work environment, so we have taken utmost care on all of those and also then how do we work with community? How do we work on those people who live around my area, my store lines? How do we work with them to create an impact there? And then how do we also focus on governance, trying to bring in governance and the land of the law and adhere to all of that and more to it so that we are able to sustain this business and this particular earth, the community themselves to work towards it so that we are able to keep doing the work that we are doing. Thank you so much, my last question to you, that how does he keep in touch with what's the consumer? Mr. Agrawal, I was gonna ask beyond data and your insights of being in your own stores, looking at what the buyers are buying, what do you do to get consumer inspiration to be in top of consumer insights? How do you make sure that you know what's happening in your domain beyond being at your own stores and looking at the sales data of your own stores? I think it's largely, first of all, the today's the world, not only from your analytics should not be only inside out, it has to be outside in as well and knowing the habits and change in the behavior or change in the habits of the consumer, the kind of the way economy is moving, the way digital initiatives are being brought in by different people. So how are those being adopted by our consumers? How are we able to understand those and then relate to our product lines and our experience that we want to offer to the customer? So I think large part of external analytics, understanding and knowing or being on the road, being in the market, talking to multiple network people, multiple industry stakeholders, multiple consumers, so that we are able to, first of all, understand and gauge where is the world moving, where is my consumer moving, what does my consumer want, what is the pain that he has, how do we able to, how are we able to service them and what is my competitive doing and what is my uniqueness about what am I offering? And then integrating with what is my data and what are the data speaking about and how do we integrate both to try and create a new offering and the next year plan or the next season's plan so that we are able to do much more better in terms of both product lines as well as the experience that we are able to provide to our consumers because in today's world, there's so much, so many things going on where we are now hearing about Meta and Metaverse and having a retail store in the Meta world is also not going to be a new thing or a different thing. So I think you need to be aware and you need to always know that this is a new world which you are bringing in and whatever has changed in the last 10 years is nothing but what will change in the next five years is going to be too much. So you need to keep knowing about all of that so that you are able to, not only you but as your organization is also able to cope up with those and be in the race before anyone can get in. Thank you so much, Mr. Agarwal. We'll let you go and clearly the consumer experience, shopping experience is a part of our daily lives. It was purely physical many years back to the combination or digital and physical but thank you for reassuring us and everyone on this broadcast physical experience is there to stay at least in the near future and that FIMART is the ESG compliant and ESG sensitive company because ESG is possibly the most important issue. We had BW Business World which is my other company. We started ranking India's top BW 500 companies on sustainability. This is the second year. We really believe like we look at a return on capital employed. We look on ROI, we look at EPS. It is very important to look at what is the sustainability footprint of the company. So kudos to you for being sensitive and yes, insights come from observation, insights come from data and insights comes from getting inspiration. And you're right, NFTs and meta words. There's a whole new world where virtual ownership rights are equally important as pointing things in a touch and feel way. It's a new brave world. I'm sure we might will be able to reinvent itself and stay relevant to this evolving world. So congratulations on the success of FIMART. Thank you for being at an exchange for media forum at the India brand conclave. And I look forward to having an interaction with you face to face. Back to you, Bhagna. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Bhatsra and what an incredible session. And Dr. Agarwal, we just request a few more minutes from you because we've got a few audience questions coming in and the audience and our consumers and our viewers are indeed very excited to have conversation via our channel with you. So, Mr. Agarwal, a couple more minutes, would that be fine? Yeah, yeah, I'm there. So Mr. Agarwal, there's a question with regards to the GST bit. Now, the government recently notified an increase in GST on apparel and footwear from 5% to 12%. How do you feel it's gonna impact the sales or what's your perspective with the GST rates being going up? Is there something which I'm sure your team would be looking into? We'd love to know from you. No, it's just a bad news for a textile retailer and manufacturer, it is something which was going on for almost two years but we as an association were trying to work with the government but the government somehow felt that this is the right move and they have taken this move to 12%. So we'll definitely want to adopt this and there'll be a pressure on the consumer as far as the prices are concerned. Consumer has to pay more because there are two things. One, the inflation on the commodity textile cotton has gone up a lot. So that has definitely already increased the prices by 20%. On that is the GST price rise. So there's almost a 25% price hike for the consumers going forward. It could behave both ways and then customer because customer's pocket may not grow and the customer, at least those customers that I'm catering to, there may be a challenge in the quantity degrowth but still I think with the economic outburst with the post pandemic customer coming in huge numbers and once again going into the bigger events and colleges and schools. So those will once again drive consumption and make this particular rise also normal and we should see this GST transition also being smoother for us. We are requesting government on certain things but I think this is going to be a big change for the retailers as well as the manufacturer that we will have to adopt and our consumers need to ultimately pay. We can't pay for our pocket because we don't have so much of margin. We will have to ask our consumers to pay for it. Absolutely. Also there's a question Mr. Agarwal from Amit Khanna who asked that how do you see supply chain and logistics by 2025? Now I know it's a very broad ended question but we'd love to know in terms of the sector and the industry overall, something you'd like to highlight, what do you foresee a few years down the line? Who do you? So supply chain apart from transportation and logistics supply chain involves a lot and that is what is right from forecasting to your order management, to your allocation management and then to your logistic pieces and the replenishments and once again returning from your customers or from your stores to back be aware also. So there are n number of pieces and ultimately retailers like us more often do supply chain rather than retailing. So we are more a supply chain company than a retail company and supply chain is in the very integral part of it. Digital definitely is helping a lot in managing the supply chain. Digital will change the supply chain mindset whether it is warehouse management, automation, robotics in the warehouse or even taking use of the Google analytics and Google reports to try and route your fleet and then give your route to the fleet supported by the huge infrastructure development which is coming up in India. The government is really putting a lot of efforts on the roads, on the waterways, on the railways. So I think there will be a lot to chew and it will become much more easier than what it was. There are a lot of such companies which are getting cropped up. There are a lot of such companies which are getting a lot of valuations. So all those companies are going to ultimately work for us and work for the retailer and the consumer to make the life of the consumer more and more better. But yes, there is also a concern on those 10 minute and 12 minute delivery lines and those logistics which are definitely not easy to handle but definitely a big challenge and a good challenge for all retailers to be in and have. So there is a lot of work happening on supply chain on logistic, the global logistic as well as a domestic logistic. How do we try and work on both the global supply chain and the logistic is going through the pain and the very, very bad times and we are seeing a lot of inflation and a lot of challenges on those lines. There will be those challenges which will exist for next six months to one year. But yes, slowly and gradually things will normalize. We will once again come back to the normalcy but yes, we need to always keep in mind that this is not going to go away completely. It will be there in your side. I'm speaking about pandemic. And so you will have to just try and understand whether it is Omicron or something else. We are there with some of the other new viruses which is going to be effective in our supply chain and we need to keep our supply chain the vendor, the entire ecosystem intact so that we are able to take and give our customers similar experiences in any time or every time wherever we are. Right, absolutely. Well, Mr. Agarwal, at interest of time, of course, there are a lot of questions coming in and we thank our audience on engaging with us. But we'll ask you a final question because we value your time of your session as well. Just one final question, Mr. Agarwal, because I feel that this is very important. Well, we often speak of two Indias, India and Bharat. What would you like to share with brands which are based in metros on targeting consumers in India's heartland? Now, we'd love to know your piece of advice since you've set up your organization so wonderfully. Coming from you, I'm sure it will be a real good guiding force to all the brands who are viewing and listening to us today. So, final word from you, Mr. Agarwal. So, Bhanap, thanking the questioner who ever asked this question because this is something which is very, very important. As you understand, India is such a large country and if you just took it one state as Uttar Pradesh, which if you could have been the country, would have been the fifth largest country of India. Now, look at Uttar Pradesh and look at the kind of cities and number of cities that Uttar Pradesh would have and the kind of density of population that city would have or those cities in that state would have. So, there are more than 300 or 500 such districts which are available in India, wherein you could actually go and do business. Now, this Bharat is a little different from what we call India. This is where people who have hard-earned income, who have large amount of large population or large percentage of those audience have their own money and the large part of them are self-employed people. So, we need to understand the taste. We need to understand what works there. Value is something that everyone seeks, whether globally or Indians, everyone seeks, but largely it is appreciated more by the small-town consumers. There is a large opportunity. Consumption is definitely there. This consumption is getting inspired and motivated by the digital medium, by the technology, by the information, by the television, by the role models. That particular aspiration, aspirational consumer want to consume, look like a role model, look like you who says in Mumbai or Delhi, he knows what to wear, he knows what to when to wear, but he has only that particular amount of money that is available in his pocket. How are we as a retailer or as a brand or as other business house try to be relevant to them? If we are relevant to them, there is a large business waiting there for every brand and everyone to be there. India is definitely bound to grow. The per capita income is there to be growing. The government is making all the moves so that rural and semi-urban and small-town grows. So there is a large opportunity, but yes, choose your town rightly, know your customer rightly, create a product or have a product which is beneficial to them and then make an environment which can suffice them. And it is definitely means, it means a large business. The whole world is eyeing that Bharat. So even we have to eye this Bharat. And this is the world ahead because ultimately this population, even if it doesn't do anything else, will consume and will consume. So nothing else will remain without consumption. Absolutely, you know, Mr. Agarwal, we can write pointers from the answer you said because it's so wonderfully put. You nailed the strategy right there. And I'm sure, as you rightly said, that India itself is so self-sustained and if the world is eyeing Bharat, we equally need to. So on this front, humbly like to thank you, Mr. Agarwal. What a wonderful conversation. And thank you for being a part of India Brand Conclave. Thank you so much, Baal Na.