Less than a week from now, 200 speakers from India and abroad, over 750 companies, more than 100 exhibitors and over 2000 delegates from India and abroad will gather in Mumbai for one of the most significant retail industry events in India. The 14th edition of the India Retail Forum, IRF 2017, will be held at the Renaissance, Mumbai on 19 and 20th September 2017.
The impact of this event promises to be huge given the dynamic nature and growth of India’s retail industry. Retail contributes 10% to the GDP and 8 to 10% to employment space. Besides, the market size is expected to nearly double by 2020.
This year’s theme - Shaping the next level of Retail consumption in the world’s fastest growing major market’ is very apt. Also, the India Omnichannel Forum 2017 happening in conjunction with IRF underlines the growing importance of an omni-channel presence for retailers.
Themes such as Analytics and Retail, Cloud in Retail, Shopping on the go, IOT – Reinventing retail and Supply Chain – solving supply efficiency, optimizing customer engagement and locking customer loyalty are certainly very key to the retail industry. So, it is great to see that these will be covered as well.
In general, here are a few big trends in retail that we have been observing recently. One, our retail customers actively look for solutions that support Social Media Analytics Cloud (SMAC) and IoT. They understand the importance of strong technology backend to be able to evolve at the pace that today’s environment demands.
We’ll be keen to hear more from the industry on the trends that they are seeing when it comes to technology adoption in retail. Sonata will be attending the event along with our partner SAP.
If you’re planning to attend the event, and would like to meet us to know more about how some of our retail customers are using technology as an advantage, do write in to us at daniel.m@sonata-software.com to schedule a meeting.
Meanwhile, so check out some interesting case studies: http://www.sonata-software.com/microsites/hybris#insight