India’s retail market could more than double to ₹210–215 lakh crore by 2035, triggering a new technology investment cycle as retailers spend to handle more stores, products, and digital orders. But the next rupee is increasingly being contested by supply chains, inventory systems, data infrastructure, and AI, with returns rather than novelty determining where it goes.
Technology spending by Indian retailers is estimated to have risen about 21 per cent to $4.6–5.1 billion in FY26, from $3.8–4.2 billion in FY25, and could more than double to $10.5–12 billion by FY30, according to industry experts at the conference. That implies annualised growth of roughly 23 per cent over five years, as technology moves from a back-office cost towards driving sales, fulfilment and productivity.
That leaves Indian retail with a substantially bigger technology bill — and a tougher test for every rupee spent. As the industry scales towards ₹215 lakh crore, the technology race is shifting from how much AI retailers can deploy to whether their supply chains, inventory and data can turn that investment into sales and margins.
“The best technology is something that the customer never notices,” said Rajesh Jain, Managing Director and CEO, Lacoste India, at the Retailers Association of India’s ReTechCon on Wednesday. Customers want “the right product at the right time at the right place,” making technology behind the shopping experience increasingly important.
Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India, framed the challenge around “what’s working for us, what’s not working for us, what is getting overripe, and where should we really be putting the money going forward” on technology.
Sanjay Vakharia, CEO, Spykar Lifestyles, called supply chain the “backbone of our business” and said technology that makes it more exact and optimises resources is “money well spent and time well spent”.
Lacoste has seen the payoff. Jain said upgrading its warehouse management and order management systems produced an “immediate jump” in online sales while also benefiting offline operations.
“In terms of ROI, more ROI is delivered from the back end — your systems and processes, the data that you collect and how you analyse the data,” Jain said.
AI is nevertheless widening the investment requirement. A second ReTechCon panel examined AI-led product discovery and agents, which require better structured information about products, customers, locations and availability. “The success of an agent depends on the data quality and not on the AI world,” one panelist said.
The experimentation phase is also giving way to deployment. One technology executive said companies are now “seriously putting AI into production”, while cautioning against putting AI into stores merely for its own sake. The executive said the priority was investing more in the backend to improve supply chains and product availability.
Published on September 24, 2026
