The future of Indian retail is AI and omnichannel: A preview from ET Soonicorns Summit 2025
It's a working day. A nudge on your phone offers a personalised bundle—your favourite brand of sneakers, now paired with curated accessories based on your last purchase. At checkout, there's no queue. You're recognised, and your payment goes through seamlessly.
The above scenarios are not pages from sci-fi. They are glimpses of predictive and precision retail. All thanks to artificial intelligence or AI. Welcome to the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Indian retail landscape, caught in the throes of a seismic shift. The era of one-size-fits-all storefronts and generic marketing is rapidly fading, replaced by a new paradigm where the customer experience is not just king, but the entire kingdom. Traditional storefronts and generic campaigns are giving way to hyper-personalised, data-driven experiences powered by AI in retail. Today, building a loyal customer base means delivering not just transactions but tailored, predictive, and omnichannel shopping experiences that resonate deeply across digital and physical touchpoints. This is the new retail battleground, and AI is the weapon of choice.
This critical transformation will be the focal point at the ET Soonicorns Summit 2025, scheduled for August 22 in Bengaluru. A pivotal session, 'AI-Driven Personalisation and Omnichannel Commerce: The Next Retail Battleground,' featured under the track 'From Pilot to Product-Market Fit', will convene some of the most influential minds from India's retail and technology sectors to dissect this revolution. The conversation will explore how startups and incumbents alike are leveraging AI to craft bespoke customer journeys, implement dynamic pricing, and orchestrate seamless omnichannel strategies to elevate the retail experience. The panel features a powerhouse trio, each at the helm of this change within their respective domains: Venu Nair, Chief of Strategic Planning and Omnichannel, Myntra
Ankit Gupta, VP, Head of Product & Tech, Reliance Retail
Rahul Kothari, COO, Razorpay The hyper-personalisation imperativeThe modern consumer is inundated with choices, and their attention is the new currency. To capture it, retailers must do more than just sell a product; they must sell an experience. This is where hyper-personalisation—the use of real-time data and AI to deliver highly tailored interactions—becomes essential. Deloitte's June 2024 report, titled Personalising Growth: It's a Value Exchange Between Brands and Customers, reveals that brands excelling at personalisation are 48% more likely to exceed revenue goals and 71% more likely to improve customer loyalty. However, the research also finds a significant gap between brand intent and customer perception: while brands believe 61% of touchpoints are personalised, only 43% are recognised as such by consumers, which makes the ET Soonicorn Summit panel on AI and personalisation all the more timely.
In fact, the Indian market reflects this global trend with a unique intensity. The AI in the Indian retail market is projected to skyrocket from USD 216.26 million in 2023 to nearly USD 2.97 billion by 2032, per data released by Credence Research. This is propelled by the insatiable demand for personalised shopping. A recent study from Zebra Technologies' 17th Annual Global Shopper Study found that 77% of Indian shoppers now prefer retailers that provide tailored recommendations powered by AI. This is not a future-state desire; it is a present-day demand.
However, personalisation is only one half of the equation. The other is creating a cohesive experience across every touchpoint, a strategy known as omnichannel commerce. As the lines between online and offline blur, customers expect to transition seamlessly between a brand's app, website, and physical store. Recent data indicates that omnichannel retail in India has been growing approximately 50% faster than single-channel retail formats, while 73% of customers use multiple channels—such as online, in‑store, and mobile—before making a purchase decision. These findings reflect evolving consumer behaviour, highlighting the importance of integrated retail strategies in India's market.
Hence, this fusion of AI-driven personalisation and omnichannel execution is the definitive challenge for Indian retail. The stakes are monumental. The Indian retail market is expected to reach US$1.4 trillion by 2024, according to a report by NASSCOM. Brands that successfully harness AI to deliver a unified, intelligent, and personal customer journey will capture a disproportionate share of this growth. Those who fail will be left behind.
Retail and tech heavyweights bring battle-tested expertise The speakers for this session bring a wealth of in-the-trenches experience, representing the convergence of fashion e-commerce, large-scale physical and digital retail, and the financial technology that underpins it all.Venu Nair helms strategic planning and omnichannel initiatives at Myntra, a company synonymous with fashion e-commerce in India. With a vast catalogue of over 2.3 million styles, Myntra has made AI a core part of its strategy to solve the challenge of product discovery. The company employs sophisticated AI tools such as MyFashionGPT and My Stylist to offer personalised style recommendations, allowing users to have a more meaningful, discovery-led shopping experience. Myntra's generative AI assistant, built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, helps users shop with open-ended natural language queries, such as 'what to wear for a festival,' leading to a threefold increase in the likelihood of purchase for those who use it. Nair, a retail veteran with over three decades of experience at giants such as Shoppers Stop, Westside, and Marks & Spencer, is tasked with managing and expanding this omnichannel strategy, making his insights into blending digital innovation with physical retail invaluable.Ankit Gupta, as the VP and Head of Product & Tech at Reliance Retail, operates at an unparalleled scale. Reliance Retail operates over 18,650 stores and a vast digital ecosystem. The company's strategy is deeply rooted in creating a seamless omnichannel model with a common inventory that enables hyper-local delivery. Gupta's teams utilise AI and ML across the entire value chain—from product recommendations, demand forecasting, and supply chain optimisation to automated replenishment and customer support chatbots. The goal is a 'zero-touch' self-optimising network that enhances customer experience through deep technology integration.Rahul Kothari, the Chief Operating Officer of Razorpay, provides a critical and often overlooked perspective: the payment layer that enables commerce. A seamless checkout is the final, crucial step in the customer journey. Razorpay has aggressively pursued an omnichannel strategy, acquiring point-of-sale (POS) firm Ezetap to merge online and offline payment experiences. The company is focused on building a system where a customer's identity is unified across channels, allowing for personalised payment experiences. As COO for India and Malaysia, Kothari's role involves enhancing this seamless customer experience across all of Razorpay's business lines. His focus on reducing friction in transactions and leveraging data to improve conversion rates is essential for any retailer looking to optimise their omnichannel operations.
ET Soonicorns Summit 2025: India's premier gathering of future unicorns The Economic Times Soonicorns Summit 2025, India's largest congregation of soon-to-be unicorns, returns to Bengaluru on August 22 for its fourth edition. This premier event brings together founders, VCs, CTOs, and policymakers under the theme 'From Research Labs to Revenue Models: The Billion-Dollar Blueprint for Scaling Indian AI Startups.'
As India's startup ecosystem matures, with AI as its definitive growth engine, the ET Soonicorns Summit 2025 serves as a strategic launchpad. The Summit promises not just to highlight trends but to deliver actionable insights for anyone building the next AI-powered unicorn or investing in India's deep-tech future. The discussion on AI-driven retail is more than just an academic debate; it's a playbook for survival and growth in one of India's most dynamic sectors. For founders, product leaders, and investors, this session represents a unique opportunity to learn from the leaders who are defining the future of commerce. It's where the blueprint for India's next generation of retail champions will be drawn.
Registration for the ET Soonicorns Summit 2025 is now open.
360 ONE is the Presenting Partner of the ET Soonicorns Summit 2025, with Raymond as the Wardrobe Partner and Shiv Nadar University as the Ecosystem Partner.
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