Indian businesses for long have ignored the significance of the logistic sector that continues to remain one of the most underinvested and underrated sectors of the world’s fastest-growing economy. While logistics undertake the critical role of connecting the production centers with consumption markets, inefficiencies in managing it can lead to severe disruption in the entire supply chain network. In spite of this, logistics has been a key contributor of the retail boom in the Indian economy.
A logistic service provider uses to be a mere transporter or warehouse bringer. But now with the swift development of various sectors, service providers are expected to deliver more value-added services like customer clearance, domestic/international freight forwarding, cross-docking, reverse logistics, freight consolidation, warehousing of modern standards, to name a few. To this demand, the players in logistics have not only met successfully but keep on adding more and more to the umbrella of their services. The rise of e-commerce can be attributed as one of the critical reasons for such transformation. It has gained huge acceptance amongst consumers and is witnessing healthy growth.
Mastery of supply chain dynamics is a critical enabler for the growth of modern retail. India is a large and fragmented country and absence of strong infrastructure and logistic system make it challenging to reach consumer located across vast distances.
In the organized retail market in India, the role of the supply chain is extremely critical since the Indian customer demands at affordable prices a variety of product mixes. It is the supply chain that ensures to the customer in all the various offerings that a company decided customers, be it cost, services, or the quickness in responding to ever-changing tastes of the customers.
A retails revolution is happening in the country. The Indian retail sector has seen unprecedented growth in the last decade. The success in this competitive and dynamic sector depends on achieving and efficient logistic and supply chain, which can be provided by professionals, as they combine the best system and expertise to manage a ready flow of goods and services. The retails boom promises to give an impetus to the host of allotted sector and the logistics industry, as the backbone of the retail sector, stands to gain the maximum.
With the expansion of retail, supply chain has taken on an increasingly important role. With the end customer becoming more demanding and time conscious, the need for just in time services is increasing. In retails, where competition intense and stakes are high, customer satisfaction is paramount.
If a logistic system works well, the retail reduces stock out, hold down inventories and improve customer service – all at the same time.
The most important part of retailing business in to find a balance between investing in front-end and back-end operations. The channel dynamics is going to change over next couple of years as the retailers start growing in size and their bargaining power is likely to increase. Probably that would bring some kind of mutual understanding between manufacturers and retailers to develop strong supply chain network. In such a scenario, both the existing operators and new operators must put collaborative effort to phase out inefficiencies in the supply chain networks.

The growth of the Indian retail industry to a large extent depends on supply chain, so effort must be made by the Indian retailers to maintain it properly.