Employment opportunity in rural retailing

The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers great opportunities to marketers. Two-thirds of country's consumers live in rural areas and almost half of the national income is generated here. The rural population dominates the Indian market with over 720 million consumers (70% of the total population) spread across 0.63 million villages in the country18. Typically Indian rural retail stores are in the form of haats and melas. Undeniably, the urban market (metropolitan cities, tier II, III cities) offers great opportunities to organized retailers but they are anticipated to saturate in the near future. Hence, most big retail companies are envisaging entering the untapped rural market. The present paper aims to analyze this growing potential of rural market and what it holds for big retailers.