East India is a very rare market

Retail consumption in Kolkata is very high, and the rest of the eastern states along with some Northeastern towns are seeing high purchasing power, according to Anirban Gupta, Managing Director-East, Colliers.

The official population of Kolkata is around 2 crore, he said, adding, “now if you look at the number of malls in the city, we have around 9-10 which sums up to about 3 million sqft. This 3 million sqft of 30 lakh retail and 2 crore population, makes it about 600 per sqft. This number is very high—per sqft of retail with the number of people, and if we put it as a benchmark, then it is the highest in the country.

“Mumbai has around 60 million sqft of retail on an average, with another 60mln coming up. The gap between the quality supply of retail between any developed city of the country to Kolkata is very less — even if the population in the city is equally high, there is also a huge floating population coming in from neighbouring states or countries like Bangladesh. So here the supply of retail is less compared to any part of the country.
“Wherever there is a density of population, you have consumption — groceries, apparel, electronics, it could be anything. If you don’t have that amount of supply to suffice the needs then there has to be over demand compared to the supply. So this is a very rare market. The surplus demand is very high which is not there in most parts of the country. Therefore, whatever the historical reason, the retail consumption of the city is indeed high.
In the other eastern states, we have the capital cities of Bhubaneshwar, Patna, Ranchi, Guwahati, Agartala and then towns like Siliguri, Raipur, Dimapur which are buzzing; and, Agartala is a very promising market. Retailers say that after Guwahati, Agartala has the richest consumption state in terms of retail products in the Northeast.”