“Job is what we do for money, but career is what we do out of interest. We must all aim at climbing up the career ladder,” Gibson G. Vedamani, former Chief Executive Officer, Retailers’ Association of India, Mumbai, said here on Saturday

Speaking on ‘Global Retail Trends’ at the concluding day of the International Conference on ‘International Marketing in Asia Pacific – Issues and Challenges’, organised by GRD Institute of Management, and GRD School of Commerce and International Business, he said that people lacked writing skills.

“You must aim at bettering this. In the corporate world people serving as managers are not able to effectively bring out their thoughts through writing,” Mr. Vedamani said.

He brought out instances where employees at the managerial level used SMS language in official communications. He urged students to have a successful person as their mentor and role model. He also suggested that students keep in touch with their mentor through social media or email and get directions on how to move from one level to another professionally.

Moving the focus from career to retail industry, Mr. Vedamani brought out interesting facts and figures through his power point presentation. He said that the retail sector was one of the most productive sectors in India. “The retail space has almost doubled in the last few years. Thanks to factors like technological advancements, growing demand from consumers and better connectivity, the retail sector in India continues to witness a boom,” he added.

Yet another reason why the retail industry in India was witnessing growth was because of successful mergers and acquisitions. This concept that was already a trend in the West, was slowly catching up in India. It was all set to change the way retail was looked at in the country.

He also touched upon aspects like online retailing, and said that that physical and online retail formats had their own merits and demerits. However, it was hard to predict which one of the two would rule the future.

To a question as to the sector that was performing well in the retail industry, he said it was the food sector, which was largely productive and highly profitable. A student was interested in knowing how to succeed in apparel retailing. He asked the student to understand the market and the potential first. Take a closer look at the section and the sub sections of the business, and use various marketing strategies to reach out to target consumers.