Airport Retail | Travel Retail | By S. Shriram
International Travel Retail chain Avolta AG’s seven-year duty-free concession at Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata marks the operator’s second India airport, after Bengaluru.
India’s airport retail was virtually nonexistent before 2008.
The old HAL enclave in Bengaluru offered a 60 sq ft kiosk as its entire retail footprint.
Kempegowda International Airport’s May 2008 opening changed that entirely — 46,000 sq ft of retail, F&B, lounges, ForEx counters and passenger services launched in one coordinated debut.
India’s leading department store chain Shoppers Stop debuted in domestic airport retail and in a JV with Nuance Duty Free for international terminals.
HMSHost commenced its India F&B journey — all firsts, all at Bengaluru simultaneously.
Consolidation followed over the next decade.
Duty-free concessions changed hands across Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai, as airport operators recognised non-aeronautical revenue as their real growth engine.
Avolta AG is itself a product of global consolidation — Swiss duty-free leader Dufry merged with Autogrill, owner of HMSHost worldwide, and rebranded as Avolta in 2023.
The company now operates across 70+ countries, nearly 1,000 locations, and approximately 5,100 points of sale — the world’s most diversified travel retail and F&B operator.
India’s context, however, differs structurally from Dubai, Singapore, or Hong Kong.
Over 90% of India’s 160 million annual passengers are domestic flyers, entirely outside duty-free eligibility.
This makes F&B and curated product retail — not duty-free — the real commercial engine at Indian airports, a distinction few global operators appreciate fully at entry.
India’s travel retail market is nonetheless projected to grow from USD 3.21 billion in 2026 to USD 5.98 billion by 2031, at a 13.28% CAGR.
Editor’s Note
S. Shriram, Editor in-chief of Retail Updates and CEO of Miles2Go Consulting is widely acknowledged as the Father of Airport Retailing in India.
In 2008, when he conceptualised, designed and operationalised over 46,000 sq ft of pure and international-level retail theatre at Bengaluru’s new terminals across departures and arrivals for domestic and international passengers, most of the industry called it ambitious.
It turned out to be prescient.
Across his columns for The Moodie Davitt Report and on his blog site, Shriram had long argued that India’s domestic-heavy passenger base would force airport retail to evolve differently from global models. Duty-free alone, he maintained, could never anchor India’s airport commercial story.
He had predicted that Tier 2 and 3 passengers — aspirational first-time flyers enabled by UDAN — would emerge as potent spenders, reaching for brands unavailable in their home towns.
He was equally early in calling the airport operator pivot toward non-aeronautical revenues. GMR’s FY26 milestone — over 50% of revenues from non-aero sources — reads today like a footnote to a thesis Shriram had already written.
Avolta’s Kolkata entry is welcome. But it will succeed only if global playbooks are translated — not merely transplanted — for the Indian passenger. Getting that right has never been the industry’s strongest suit. Yet.
— The Editor
Discover more from Retail Updates
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
