Why India's malls keep getting bigger

i’ve always found malls slightly strange. you can buy almost everything online. you don’t technically need to walk around a building for an hour looking at shoes. and yet new malls keep opening, and people keep going. so clearly something is happening that a delivery box can’t reproduce.

shopping isn’t always about shopping

a mall is partly a retail business. but it’s also entertainment, food, socialising, air conditioning, a movie, somewhere to meet friends, somewhere to go when you don’t actually have anywhere to go. that’s a different offer from an e-commerce site. online shopping is built around convenience. malls are built around experience, and experience is much harder to compare on a price-per-unit basis.

the economics depend on the space being used

a mall owner isn’t really selling products. they’re renting out physical space and everything that happens in it: rent from shops, advertising, food and drink, entertainment, parking, events. the more people visit, the more valuable the whole thing becomes. but that cuts both ways. a beautiful mall with empty corridors is still a lot of expensive concrete. so the business lives on footfall, and not just any footfall. someone who walks in, takes a photo and leaves is worth far less than someone who shops, eats, watches a film, and comes back next weekend.

online didn’t kill physical retail

it just changed what physical retail has to be good at. if i can buy the same thing online for less, a store needs to give me another reason to show up. let me touch the product, try it, eat something, meet someone, or just spend an evening somewhere.

when convenience becomes cheap, experiences become more valuable.

that’s why i don’t think the future of retail is simply online versus offline. the businesses that win will be the ones that understand what each side is actually good at. nobody needs another mall. but people still want somewhere to go.