India’s mall story began in the early 2000s, when there were just three shopping centres in the country. Our mall culture started developing when Indian shoppers began to realise the advantages that a clean, air-conditioned, organised mall had over an unorganised street. Today, malls are literally mushrooming across the Indian subcontinent. Malls have survived it all – the recession of 2007-2008 and the advent of e-commerce. They’ve grown bigger, brighter. They’ve evolved the way Indians view traditional brick-and-mortar retail, selling experiences, wooing shoppers in, making them stay and spend and converting them into loyalists. With over 600 operational malls across the country, it’s safe to say that malls are here to stay. For a mall to achieve scalable success today, the management needs to be skillful in understanding, forecasting and adapting to changing consumer needs and expectations. Malls need to keep up with the constantly evolving ecosystem, stay up to date on trends and deliver new experiences to increase footfalls and sales. The cover story of IMAGES Retail’s September issue brings you a lowdown on some of the best malls in India, the unparalleled retail experiences they provide and how they are becoming more than just shopping destinations. The issue includes a research report by JLL as well as thorough coverage on everything these social hubs have to off er including brands, customer experiences, experiential retail, superior technology and more. The issue also brings a futuristic feature titled ‘Robots in Retail’, which talks about how as technology advances, a new generation of robots is graduating from back-end operations and becoming a reality in retail stores, interacting with humans at store fronts. As always, I hope you fi nd the issue informative and benefi cial. Do log on to our website, www.indiaretailing.com to read great features and analyses on the stage of the global retail industry with an emphasis on India.