A sudden recovery of malls may help some staffs who were taken out of their jobs temporarily during the time lockdown to regain their financial security. For example, Viviana Mall had to reduce employees by about 50% of their original strength during lockdown times. All of them are waiting eagerly to get back to their work.
Opening up of malls & restaurants in several states and districts, owners believe in speedy recovery this time as compared to the first wave of Covid, by maintaining the pace of taking vaccination businesses can be able to return to their normal stage. It is said that we can prevent the third wave by increasing the pace of taking vaccination which will help the owners to get back to the normal stage between July and September. Gurvineet Singh, CEO at Thane-based Viviana Mall, said that it took 45-50 days to reach 50% of pre-Covid footfalls when the company started its operation after the first lockdown. He also said that the Pre-Covid sales hit 75% over the weekend ended June 13, which also helped by an increase in the average spend per customer. If the customer spent Rs 1,000 earlier on an average, he is now spending Rs 1,600.
A 100% recovery was found in electronic products while other product segments like departmental stores and activewear categories stores are also coming up with sufficient sales. Restaurant recovery was not possible due to seating capacities. Pushpa Bector, executive director at DLF Retail said that around 11,000-12,000 customers came to DLF at the end of the week of June 13. This makes sense that about 20,000 customers were there before the lockdown began. There was no provision of e-commerce deliveries during the lockdown period. Bector is looking forward that the recovery by September if there happens to be no third wave. In the case of Pacific Mall that runs in Delhi’s Dwarka and Subash Nagar, about 30-35% is mainly from digital items and gadgets. Abhishek Bansal the Executive director said that the business will come into a normal state. Bansal said that the end of season sales along with the onset of the festive season sales in October should compensate for the overall consumption.
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