Offline retail, malls have gone through a painful pandemic year. Will 2021 be any better?

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Housekeeping staff sanitizes the floor of Palladium, High Street Phoenix Mills shopping mall on July 30, 2020 in Mumbai, India.

Synopsis
Malls have been the biggest casualty of the pandemic-triggered lockdowns. After some painful negotiations, mall chains such as Phoenix Mills, Nexus, and DLF had hoped for normalcy in rents in FY22, but the second wave has been a dampener. With restrictions in place and the possibility of a third wave looming, what’s in store for them?

Some kinds of retail businesses thrived in the pandemic. With more Indians moving online than any amount of discounting or wide assortment of products could ever get them to, direct-to-consumer or D2C became a buzzword. Shoppers rediscovered the utility and resilience of local stores, especially as the economic shock hit their pockets. As a result, e-commerce grew to USD38 billion last year in GMV (gross merchandise value) and is set to grow to