Much like the rest of the world, India is fast catching up to the contemporary trends in the shopping mall business in its own way. Malls are no longer places that are primaraly for shopping and retail purposes, they need to offer something different to survive in the digital age.
The Indian Retail Landscape
Shopping centers still hold a significant place as retail hubs in the suburbs and lower tier cities across India. However, retail alone is not as big a reason to pull huge crowds to the malls as before, especially in the larger, tier 1 and tier 2 cities. Entertainment services and entertainment destinations are increasingly finding a lucrative partnership with the malls or retail businesses across these cities.
What’s Happening?
The increasing disposable incomes for the huge middle class, the rise of eCommerce along with an increasingly fast-paced lifestyle have together led to an increased demand for varied entertainment avenues and experience bases services, all under one convenient roof.
Movie theatres and shopping malls have been doing it for years but in keeping with the changing consumer trends, malls have started to transform into some kind of a “third space” – a community space besides the office and the home which can provide the new consumer with the best of entertainment, food, retail and a place to spend time with family and socialise with friends, all under one roof.
Malls are transforming into community spaces, bringing to the discerning consumer the best of brands, food, and entertainment. This new business model has come to be known as the FEC (Family Entertainment Centre).
Delhi NCR Leads in this New Wave of FECs
There are a serious number of these FECs spread across the Delhi national capital region, more than anywhere else in India.
Entertainment City, Noida
It is a sprawling facility spread across an area of 147.48 acres. The Entertainment City houses about five hundred top notch brands in entertainment, retail, and hospitality and fetches around 6 million visitors monthly.
It started off in 2002 and has since been developed in phases. Phase I added The Great India Place Mall, and Teen Zone of Amusement Park. Phase II introduced Gardens Galleria Mall, Family Zone, Arrival Village and the Lake WOW. Phase III is still underway.
Wonder Speedway, one of the largest go-carting facilities in India was added in 2015 at Worlds of Wonder, along with the opening of Gardens Galleria mall. A one of its kind theme park facility for the kids was added in 2016.
Some of the amazing entertainment avenues at the entertainment city include:
Worlds of Wonder
It offers an outstanding Adventure Park, Water Park and Go-carting facility with impeccable security standards. It offers entertainment for every age group with its TÜV Nord certified rides, fun filled slides, the largest go-carting track in North India, largest man-made lake that serves as a boating facility, a 360-metre lazy river, and a beach themed wave pool.
Playbox
Aimed at kids, Playbox is an extremely immersive facility primarily catering for children between the ages of two and nine. Sprawling over an area of 14,000 square feet, it provides two separate areas; My Maze and My Burrow, one for the age group 2-4 and the other for those who are 5-9 to ensure safety of the children.
The facility is mapped with surveillance cameras and has foam padded areas to ensure children’s safety so that the parents can go shopping in peace.
KidZania
It seeks to amalgamate education with entertainment, trying to incorporate a concept unofficially known as edutainment. The facility provides an indoor facility that reproduces a real city and its workings built to scale for the kids. So they can interact with the real world and get to learn firsthand about it in a controlled and safe environment and be inspired and educated as they do. It is spread across 75,000 square feet and offers over a hundred activities for the kids across the ages of 2 to 16.
KidZania combines play with education in a fun and interactive way
DLF Mall of India, Noida
The largest malls are teaming up with the entertainment centres all over India and DLF Mall of India is no different. Two of the entertainment facilities here are:
Smaaash
Smaaash has 33 facilities all across India and most of them are located inside Malls. Smaaash is a complete family entertainment centre offering a range of services from gaming, such as Virtual Reality and simulated sports, sky carting to dining and food services. It is a complete entertainment hub for all ages as they famously claim to cater to all ages from 8 to 80.
The urban sports park is a heavy weight among all of their offerings. It boast world’s first 360-degree cricket simulator where a player can play off cricketing legends like in atop notch simulation.
Ski India
This makes up the first ski resort in the Delhi national capital region. Covering an area of 60,000 square feet and covered in thousands of tons of snow, Ski India offers exhilarating winter sports and activities such as skiing, slope tobogganing, snow sledging, ice skating, snow carousal, snowfall dancing, etc. it offers a thrilling and chilling experience for all ages and the entire family.
CityWalk New Delhi
A dearth of play areas for children in the city, and a need to amalgamate education with entertainment for them led to the inception of “Hang out”
The space serves as complete family entertainment centre with its range of facilities such as a multi-level gaming arcade, 4D rides, a bowling alley, a special fun zone for kids, along with dining options
DLF Place Mall Saket, Delhi
With Federation of Gamers (FOG), the DLF Place mall serves as another example of evolving Mall models. The mall hosts this world class gaming arena which blends reality and gaming and focuses on constant up gradation and service enhancement to provide the best gaming experience to all the gaming enthusiasts.
It serves as an attractive spot for youth to hang out with their friends and to socialise with other gamers while it boosts footfall to the mall.
