Indian shopping malls look at social currency of customer data over its own space

India Shopping Centre Forum 2019 deliberates on new trends

 Mumbai, April 25, 2019: Replicating the success of online shopping, brick and mortar malls too are getting redefined as they adopt for social currency of target customers over space currency of the malls, according to experts at India Shopping Centre Forum 2019, here Wednesday.

“Mall are not dying. They are going through a dynamic and exciting transformation as we measure our customers sentiment and happiness with our properties with 2.5 million Facebook follower and 5 million visitors to our website,” said Timothy Earnest, Group Director and CEO, Al Futtaim Malls, which is looking at mall business outside UAE.

Footfall, dwell time, convenience and social media engagement, special moments are significant for social engagement with customers to drive revenue beyond space leasing, Earnest said.

Speaking at the panel discussion, Pushpa Bector, Executive Vice-President & Head, DLF Shopping Malls said, “We have an app called look-out platform that reaches to 1 million customers and quantify their experience about malls on social platforms. Each property tells us a different story based on our conclusions from date mining based on data collection of customer moments in the mall.”

Earlier, sharing his trends and insights on India’s retail real estate, Ashutosh Limaye, Director and Head, Anarock Consulting Services, said, “Data gathered in malls is also a ‘revenue’ and perhaps will prove to be more valuable than rents and revenue share as predictive and prescriptive analytics of data is driving profitability with their applications based on consumer behavior, store performance etc.”

India will add 20 million square feet of Grade A mall space over the next 3 years to its 100 million square feet space spread over 250 malls. Vacancy is at malls stood at 8% with 50 malls shutting down or getting re-positioned as mix-use centers, Limaye said.

Retail malls accounted for 14% of the US $14 billion of private equity funds that India’s real estate sector attracted over past four years. Half of the 14% funds invested in retail malls were in non-metro cities like Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Indore, he said.

Corporate Comm India(CCI Newswire)