Short term Caution; Long Term no Apprehension
By Prabhu Ram and Soma Tah
Mumbai, Oct 29, 2008 1843 hrs IST

Even as the global financial meltdown is largely impacting the IT/ITES and the financial services industries, ripples are being felt in the retail vertical as well.

While most retailers said they will not curtail IT spend on long term projects, they said the short term approach on IT spending and new investments will be that of caution and diligence.

Sankarson Banerjee, CEO, Future Bazaar, said "Consumer spending might take a significant U-turn if the current economic downturn continues in the forthcoming quarters of 2009 too. The long-term infrastructure projects will not be deferred. Instead, we are reviewing some of our small budget projects and financial allocations, and will cautiously invest on further expansion initiatives as it involves large investments."

On the current economic downturn, Arun Gupta, customer care associate and group CTO, Shoppers's Stop Limited said, "It is true that the costs will be under pressure and new investments will be reviewed with a lot more diligence than in the past. Mature organizations with resources will selectively continue to invest in long-term solutions while continuing to challenge the operational costs. I personally feel the pressure will remain for the next three to four quarters. As far as our overall IT investments are concerned, we continue to invest in long-term strategic projects, while deferring some nice-to-have initiatives. However, keeping the crunch in mind, we have reviewed our budgets and brought in some efficiency with the help of our vendor partners."

Vandana Kilam, deputy general manager for Bharti Retail said the company's IT investment is unaltered. She said India has huge online retail market. But this is presently untapped due to variance in language, culture and buying patterns for every 50km circumference. Thus a single IT strategy is difficult to implement. However, Bharti Retail will continue to expand its investments with its solution partner IBM for countrywide data warehousing solution.