American business strategy consulting companies conjectured that there is huge opportunity in India?s organised retail. This Excel sheet evaluation missed considering the country?s multiple cultures, religions, language complexity and geographical contradictions that exist nowhere else in the world. It?s similar to the UK?s gamble with the capital market. Great Britain?s industrial revolution in 1740 was the summit that changed the world. But from 1980, the UK economy shifted towards financial speculation where senior management drew incredible salaries with negligible basis. Its impact became visible in the recent economic downturn.

Experiential competence was absent in the Excel sheet hype about India?s organised retailing. Moneyed business houses entered the retailing venture to quickly encash growth in the GDP boom. Scarcity of retail expertise made professionals in industries like FMCG and telecom jump into big openings in a new avenue. It was a mistake by both employees and employers, except of course at the senior level where FMCG professionals with immense knowledge of business processes are essential to run the industry.

FMCG has not matured as per our country?s size, so many product categories still remain unbranded commodities. Penetration of branded categories in rural, mid and small town markets is very low. Counterfeit brands are mushrooming; colourful, nameless, inexpensive Chinese brands are available everywhere. Even the required business knowledge of FMCG or telecom professions is at a nascent stage in India. So these professionals moving to the retail industry where a completely different kind of expertise is required to consolidate it makes little sense. Historically, the retail industry in the West has created its own growth and profitability benchmarks with shopper connect, a highly practical vision of the catchments and excellent sourcing methods.

The difference in professional competence is that FMCG, electronics and telecom are very uni-product centric where you specialise in, and drive, each area. Professionals here can easily shift from one industry to another, and they do not interact with consumers during their real purchase time. Relationship with the consumer here is virtual, through advertisements. They use film or sports celebrities as brand ambassadors who will supposedly make consumers believe in the product?s real benefit. That same celebrity often sings the praises of cement, pen, chocolate, apparel or luxury cars to the same audience within two minutes of a commercial pause.

In contrast, a retailer interacts face to face with shoppers at the moment of purchase. Organised retail business involves multi-category sourcing with direct shopper connect. Here you mastermind distribution through high sourcing precision while buying low cost, high quality.

Simultaneously you ensure the vendor gets high volumes, and also anticipate the shopper?s selection of unparalleled choice. The manufacturing complex is not your headache. The big difference in retail is that you meet and know the shopper who may not consume the product. In manufacturing industries, you address consumers at large and have no control over them.

India has 12 million retail outlets but less than 4% is organised retail. Having visited thousands of mom & pop (kirana) stores ranging from small rural to metro cities for the development of different brands, I can vouch for the significantly high shopper knowledge that mom & pop shopkeepers have. Unlike organised retail, they have superior psychological and sociological connect to their customers and know their body language as they live and breathe with them, year after year, in the same locality. The language and attitude of multinational manufacturing companies is that they spend hour after hour on strategy and thinking. In juxtaposition, the retail business only talks of the activation programme required: sourcing, distribution, footfall and conversion numbers in a day.

Apart from fashion stores, organised retail is not a flamboyant business; it just provides experience to shoppers beyond their need. My 25-year experience with large French retails Carrefour,

Intermarche, Leclerc, Galeries Lafayette, Monoprix and Group Casino fleshes out that up to 1990, most successful retail businesses were handled by very basic merchants. They didn?t have higher education but were great experts in trading. They created a global benchmark with sustainable growth and profitability; business entwined with incredible practical application of knowledge in sourcing, distribution and catchments for shopper connect with meticulous activation drive and passion.

Abandoning his studies for the Catholic priesthood, Edouard Leclerc opened a small grocery store in Landerneau, France, in 1949 as a social project to offer consumers wholesale-level prices post-World War II. This became a hypermarket in 1964. In 50 years, Leclerc has trained over 2,000 merchants such as associate Jean-Pierre Le Roch, a peasant from Brittany, who started the supermarket chain Intermarch? over 30 years ago to defend low prices and provide fresh produce throughout Europe.

Hypermarket is a totally French concept pioneered by Marcel Fournier, Denis and Jacques Defforey who created Carrefour (meaning crossroads) in 1957 in suburban Annecy. As early as 1869 La Samaritaine in France opened the first department store at the same time as England?s Sainsbury, and in 1898 Groupe Casino started supermarkets in France.

Low profile merchants with extremely superior shopper knowledge have totally overhauled traditional marketing, sales, distribution and sourcing techniques to create retailing that revolutionised connect to the mass market. Up to 1990, they ran their business with mediocre employees who performed by gaining proximity to shoppers with strong activation. No high profile professional wanted to work in the retail industry earlier. Only when retailing became very powerful in Europe and started commanding the manufacturer did high-status executives from FMCG, electronics, insurance and banking join here at their own initiative.The retailing benchmark was established by middling unpretentious traders who had the art of sourcing and selling with stringent backend operating discipline.

How can Indian organised retails see quick return on investment colour? Organised retail is not a business where you sow investments today and reap profit harvests tomorrow. Owners and employees need to first adopt the mentality and basic structure of mom & pop stores. Store staff can have very basic educational qualification but must get practical, hands-on and painstaking training on shopper sensitivity with sophisticated methods to service India?s multi-cultural complex with a strong activation programme. This will avoid high overhead costs and give breathing space to investors to learn and address improvements. With good hygiene, artistic sense and pricing advantage, organised retail could offer high shopping experience that?s cheaper than mom & pop stores so that big volume sales cascade from high footfall and high conversion in the right catchments where business can sustain.

Over-sophisticated organised retails as we have today will always remain air-conditioned centres to visit on hot summer days. How many shoppers have you seen emerge from them with lots of shopping bags?

The author is an international creative business strategy consultant