'India will have 75 mn credit cards by 2010'

Mumbai, Sep 8 (UNI) V Vaidyanathan, senior GM&country head - retail banking, ICICI Bank, predicted here today that India will have 75 million credit cards by 2010.

Delivering a talk on ''Changing spending patterns of Indian consumers'' on the inaugural day of the two-day event ''India Retail Front (IRF,'06)'' here today, he outlined the need to better understand the customer and create differentiation to achieve customer loyalty keeping the above fact in view.

He was also of the opinion that the number of credit card terminals will increase to 10.20 lakh by 2010 as compared to only 3.20 lakh at present. He added that in the future, Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities will be the growth engines of the retailing industry in the next few years.

In a panel discussion on ''Retail as Media - an Increasing Force in Brand Plans'', Madura Garments president Hemchandra Jhaveri and Counselage MD Suhel Seth emphasised on the need for retail and advertising to work in sync with each other to create more powerful brands and expand the retail pie.

They were joined by Bijou Kurien, president and CEO, Lifestyle&Luxury, Reliance Retail, Vikram Sakhuja, Chief Operating Officer, GroupM, South Asia and Jitu Mehta, president, Spencers.

During the course of the discussion, it was opined that loyalty programmes did not live up to their promise and that mass media vehicles should be given lesser importance in the communication strategy.

At another panel discussion, moderated by Kunal Banerji, vice president, marketing&corporate communication, Ansal API, the panel members agreed upon the need to create differentiation in malls. The panel comprised of Sanjay Sachdeva, vice president marketing, Advance India Projects Ltd, I S Narula, president&CEO, Ishanya and Sonica Malhotra, ED, MBD Group.

Maharashtra Governor S M Krishna, earlier, inaugurated the event and underlined the fact that retailing is one of the growth engines that will drive the future of the Indian economy.

UNI KKD MAZ SKB2040