Paanwallahs – The Indigenous and Dynamic Retailers of India

Abstract

India is taking giant steps towards becoming a developed economy from an under developed economy and to achieve this objective one of the most important and focus area is the retail industry of India. The government of India has been opening up its retail industry for foreign players in a phased manner.The retail industry can be divided into two categories organized and unorganized sector. Though as Indians we are now used to malls, super markets, hyper markets but it’s really surprising to know that out of the total retail industry in India, roughly organized retail is only a mere 4%, and rest 96% is unorganized. This shows the potential that this industry carries with self, in properly channelized then can do wonders for India’s growth.This report is mainly focused on one of the forms of unorganized retail, i.e. the ‘paanwallah shops’; sellers of betel leaves. This is a form of traditional retail and in spite of strong cultural background; this unique stores are changing with time mainly because of various changes in the environment in which they operate. But this form of retailing is still one of the most common in India. On an average in India one can find at least 2-3 paan shop in a small locality.This study tries to find out about these Paanwallahs, and tried to answer few questions as to how this business is carried out, how these retailers are still sustaining, etc. For this study an interview guide has been prepared and a survey was conducted among different Paanwallahs of Kolkata (India), and accordingly conclusions were drawn.This study is going to help in getting an insight of this traditional retail format and to understand where they actually stand in this highly competitive environment.