The Indian retail market is being projected to touch $1.5 trillion by 2030, from a meagre $0.793 trillion in 2020. This is being propelled by socio-demographic and economic factors such as urbanization, escalating income growth and a rapid rise in nuclear families and their altering consumer demands. Alternatively, the Indian E-commerce industry is being anticipated to cross the $350 billion mark by 2030.

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The pandemic, that has been enduring for the last 2 years has been tremendously taxing and testing for global economies and India has been no different. Incessant lockdowns and curfews levied for brief periods, commanding confines on retailing hours, movement of people, operational days, etc., have all given rise to retail establishment owners sustaining substantial damages.

The retail sector is among the principal providers to India’s GDP, at least 8-10% on an average and is also the 2nd largest employer in the country. With what is highly evident, E-commerce companies and channels are expanding at an incredible rate with more than 19,000 E-commerce businesses in India and 800+ D2C brands roughly worth $44.6 billion in 2021 projected to reach $100 billion by 2025.

Essential to say, this segment is worth billions of dollars and employs millions of people and must receive a much-needed boost to steer towards economic recovery. I am hoping that our government will earmark resources to strategize for the revitalization of the economy and promote growth.

Let’s now talk about the nuances.

Fast-Track The National Retail Trade Policy 

As an E-commerce entrepreneur, this definitely is one of the key asks from the retail industry and that is to speed up the execution of the National Retail Trade Policy that will help reorganize the development of all formats of retail trade, decrease compliance and regulatory load, deliver industry standing to the sector, together with fiscal incentives to projects being undertaken at a large scale.

There can be a deliberation to establish restructurings for the long-term problems by pledging to comprehensive digitization which is also one of the five pillars of the proposed National Retail Trade Policy. New businesses do not have to wait for months to obtain numerous licenses and authorizations under various laws specific to retail trade in India. Some of the most prominent are Consumer Protection Act, Shops and Establishments Act, Essential Commodities Act and so many more.

Lower Compliance Necessities 

In the direction of encouraging ease of doing business for E-commerce accelerators like Assiduus Global INC, there should be the consideration of eliminating a number of compliance requirements, such as Tax Collected at Source or TCS on sale of goods considering there is already TDS on purchase of goods introduced in the Union Budget 2020. Also, there should be adequate data points to be made available on the purchase or sale side of the operation as well from GST compliances.

The Start-Up Community Needs Reinforcement

The retail and E-commerce sector encompass a sizable start-up community. To encourage and cultivate this community, the Startup India initiative was initiated that endows start-ups to increase entrepreneurship, economic growth and employment across India. To further reinforce this enterprise, there is the dire need to contemplate presenting the benefit of deferment of withholding tax in ESOPs from exercise to sale or specified events for identified start-ups and to all DPIIT registered start-ups.

I have heard experts talk of how this Budget could consider focusing on the discrepancy in long-term capital gains tax rates between Non-Resident and Resident shareholders of start-ups.

In Conclusion

We all have our eyes set on the Budget this year and are optimistic that our leaders will tackle the state of affairs at hand and come up with the slackening and monetary packages which could further uplift growth in the sector.

(Brand Desk Content)