Last weekend we decided to buy a stroller for our baby and also decided to pickup a bigger suitcase.
For some reason, all the major malls in Bangalore were having a discount sale , which meant that they were packed with people.
First we decided to try Bangalore Central on Residency Road, as we remembered it to have a good suitcase collection. Uh-oh. Wrong decision. There were so many cars trying to get in that the line went on to the previous road ! The security guard told me , oh make that, commanded me to go round and come back after taking a 2 km detour.
I decided that Bangalore Central did not want to do business with me.
Driving down Commissariat road we reached Richmond Road where two other malls , Life Style and Globus are located. Since Richmond Road is a one way street, we could not park in Lifestyle, so we parked at Globus and promptly went ahead and shopped at LifeStyle !
Moral of the story: Growth of retailing and malls have not been kept up by infrastructre growth and basic amenities like parking space. Most of these places probably use some outdated ratio to calculate number of people coming in cars, and that ratio has itself changed in the last 3-4 years with the availability of auto finance and organizations leasing cars to employees as a tax saving measure. Unless these issues are solved...retailing's bane with continue to be lots of footfall and not enough sales !
Forum has the largest parking space amongst all malls....yet on a bad weekend...you cannot find any space....one is better off going to the malls at about 11 AM in the morning....
ReplyDeleteThe bigger issue is as to why Malls and multiplexes are allowed to open in the heart of the city....rather than asking to go on the outskirts...
/Rajw
Interesting maybe this is another matter that needs thought. Teh growth of retailing and malls in India is a subject of all major publications. Probabaly we need some some foresight by the planners that infrastructure has to cope up for any sustainable revenues to coem to this segment.
ReplyDeleteThis could been a paid policy recommendation for all you know.
Interesting maybe this is another matter that needs thought. Teh growth of retailing and malls in India is a subject of all major publications. Probabaly we need some foresight by the planners that infrastructure has to cope up for any sustainable revenues to coem to this segment.
ReplyDeleteThis could been a paid policy recommendation for all you know.