Retail companies across apparel, jewellery and grocery are likely to report a strong financial performance in Q4 despite geopolitical tensions clouding consumer sentiment in March.
Business updates of top retail firms including Trent, V-Mart, V2 Retail, Titan, Avenue Supermarts, Senco Gold and Kalyan Jewellers point to a Q4 revenue growth of 19-64% for the period. This comes as a combination of festive and wedding season demand aided sales growth during the period, most retailers said. Categories such as apparel, footwear and grocery also benefitted from GST price cuts initiated in September, say analysts.
GST Bachat Utsav
Same-store sales growth (SSG)—a key metric of underlying demand—has remained robust for most organised retailers, signaling that consumption momentum held steady despite macro headwinds. Barring Jubilant FoodWorks, which reported a like-for-like (LFL) growth of just 0.2% in Q4 for Domino’s, players such as V2 Retail, Avenue Supermarts and V-Mart saw SSG in the region of 7-12% in the period under review. Jewellery retailers were standout performers, with Kalyan Jewellers, Senco Gold and Titan reporting SSG of 45-48% in Q4.
Titan, the country’s largest jewellery retailer, has pointed to strong pent-up demand in Q4, saying that despite high gold prices, the jewellery business recorded high single-digit buyer growth during the period. This came after buyer growth stayed flat in the previous three quarters of FY26. Titan’s jewellery business gives it over 85% of its total revenue.
Navigating Geopolitics
The country’s second-largest jewellery retailer – Kalyan Jewellers – did admit in its business update this week that the ongoing geopolitical situation in the Middle East did impact customer walk-ins in March at its stores in the Gulf. But Ramadan sales in the last week of March did offset some of the impact, helping the company post a revenue growth of 39% in its international operations. International operations contribute 11% to the company’s revenue, while Indian operations give the firm 89% of its topline.
Both Trent and Avenue Supermarts reported a revenue growth of 19-20%, driven by aggressive store additions. According to Elara Capital’s Executive Vice President Karan Taurani, Trent’s standalone revenue growth of 20% was led by store additions of 25% year-on-year across Westside and Zudio.
Avenue Supermarts, which operates D-Mart stores, added a record 58 stores in the fourth quarter, bringing its total count to 500. 85 new stores were added throughout FY26. While revenue growth is robust at 19% in Q4, analysts at Motilal Oswal point to potential margin pressures from high operational costs and competitive pressures.
V-Mart Retail, meanwhile, said its revenue growth for Q4 came in at 24%, driven by steady demand across major markets and expansion of its store network. It opened 29 stores and closed 6 in Q4, bringing its total number of stores to 577 by 31 March 2026. During the entire year of FY26, V-Mart opened 92 new stores, the most ever in a single year. However, it closed 12 stores during the year, which were under performing, it said.