In 2013, Indian organised retail was defined by large-format stores and modern trade chains. All that changed with ecommerce platforms like Amazon India, Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal and others venturing into Tier II and III cities. But the rise of ecommerce only spurred physical retail after a period of disruption, led by Future Group, Reliance Retail, DMart, Tata-owned Trent and several other supermarkets.

Between 2017 and 2022, the D2C segment and new-age brands brought in a new era of online shopping and digital-first models, leveraging modern marketing, UPI and digital payments, analytics and logistics prowess. More than a decade after the ecommerce revolution began, India’s retail giants and marketplaces are now dealing with the rise of AI, particularly GenAI in 2022 till now.

If anything, these maturing digital journeys of consumers have opened up a clear path for generative AI, advanced analytics and predictions, and AI-native workflows.

AI In Retail: From Peripheral To Central

While artificial intelligence and GenAI models were once limited to isolated use cases in Indian retail, they are becoming indispensable today. From inventory planning to product discovery, AI is becoming core to ecommerce and marketplace needs in many ways.

Until 2022, the Indian ecommerce and retail players largely leveraged AI for discriminative models — using structured data for product recommendations, personalised offers, and demand forecasting.

“This was a phase where AI contributed to functional improvements across operations,” says Gowri Shankar Nagarajan, a partner at early stage investment firm Antler, adding that these models helped optimise logistics and improve CX, but were mostly deployed in the background.

Post-2021, the shift toward GenAI in retail opened new possibilities. These models handle unstructured data i.e text, audio, video to enable voice commerce, automated content generation, and chatbot-led customer support, improved logistics........

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