Beyond Warehouses: Building the Infrastructure of Commerce

1. The New Geography of Indian Commerce

For much of the first phase of India’s e-commerce revolution, the geography of digital commerce was closely associated with the country’s major metropolitan markets. This was understandable. Dense populations, higher purchasing power, better logistics, greater digital adoption, and concentrated consumer demand made the largest cities natural starting points for online retail. The physical infrastructure required to support e-commerce could also be concentrated around these markets.

That geography is now changing.

Quick commerce provides perhaps the clearest illustration. By August 2026, dark stores operated by quick-commerce companies had spread across 477 Indian cities, according to a report by CLSA, released on 27 August. The expansion is no longer simply a matter of adding more dark stores to established metropolitan networks. Newer entrants are deliberately targeting underpenetrated geographies, while established companies are testing relatively small dark-store networks in newer markets before deciding whether local demand and unit economics justify further expansion.

This is an important transition. A quick-commerce company entering a smaller city does not merely acquire another customer market. It has to solve a physical problem: where should inventory be located, how much capacity is required, how should orders be fulfilled, and what physical network can support the promised service level?

The answer does not necessarily have to be another company-owned network of dense dark stores.

Amazon’s recent expansion strategy offers an intriguing alternative. According to an Economic Times report, published on 2 September, Amazon Now is using existing More Retail stores as ‘pseudo-fulfilment centres’ in smaller cities, allowing the same physical infrastructure to serve both walk-in customers and online orders. Rather than replicating a dense dark-store network in every market, the e-commerce platform can connect itself to infrastructure that already exists.

The significance of this approach extends beyond Amazon. It suggests that the physical geography of Indian commerce is becoming more reusable. A shop, supermarket, warehouse or fulfilment facility need not serve only the commercial enterprise that owns or leases it. With the appropriate digital and operational systems, physical capacity can increasingly be connected to multiple forms of commerce.

The demand-side geography is expanding at the same time. The ET report also says, citing an Infisum projection, that India’s e-commerce market was worth approximately $125 billion in 2024, and is projected to reach $345 billion by 2030, implying an 18.4 per cent compound annual growth rate. The report also projected that e-commerce could account for 10-12 per cent of Indian retail spending and serve 420-440 million online shoppers by the end of the decade. It also noted that quick commerce is moving beyond groceries into categories such as fashion, beauty, and electronics.

The implication is larger than the growth of any individual platform or business model. India’s digital commerce map is becoming geographically broader, commercially more diverse, and physically more demanding.

This creates a strategic question that deserves to be considered separately from the question of which e-commerce platform wins:

Who will provide the physical infrastructure upon which India’s expanding commerce economy operates?

That question becomes particularly important in smaller cities and towns. There may be sufficient aggregate demand to support sophisticated storage, fulfilment, and logistics infrastructure - but not necessarily sufficient demand for every e-retailer, quick-commerce company, or large retailer to construct its own dedicated facility.

This is where India’s existing physical commerce infrastructure becomes strategically important. The country already possesses millions of retail establishments, extensive local real estate, warehouses, distribution facilities, and commercial spaces. The challenge is not simply to construct more infrastructure. It is to organise, professionalise, and connect the physical capacity that commerce increasingly requires.

India’s next phase of e-commerce may therefore require a new infrastructure layer: one that sits between real estate and retail, serves multiple commerce enterprises, and allows digital commerce to expand without requiring every participant to reproduce the same physical network.

That is the beginning of a different way of thinking about e-commerce infrastructure.

2. The Infrastructure Hidden Inside E-Commerce

E-commerce is usually presented as a digital business. Its visible interface is a website or application; its marketplace is algorithmic; its payments are digital; and its customer relationship is increasingly mediated by software and data. Yet every successful digital transaction ultimately encounters a physical world. Products have to be stored somewhere, picked and packed, moved through a network and, in many cases, returned through that same network.

The larger e-commerce becomes, therefore, the more consequential its physical infrastructure becomes.

This infrastructure is considerably broader than the warehouse. It includes regional distribution centres, fulfilment centres, cold-storage facilities, sorting and consolidation facilities, packaging and returns infrastructure, micro-fulfilment centres, loading and unloading facilities, and the local interfaces through which goods finally reach consumers. In some categories, specialised infrastructure may also be required for temperature-sensitive, high-value, bulky, or regulated products.

India has already developed substantial logistics capacity around e-commerce. But much of this capacity has evolved through the requirements of individual enterprises. An e-commerce company establishes a network according to its own demand patterns. A large retailer develops distribution facilities according to its own supply chain. A logistics company develops warehouses according to contracts with particular customers. A real-estate developer constructs a warehouse and leases it to whoever can provide the required occupancy and returns.

There is nothing inherently inefficient about any of these arrangements. Indeed, they have enabled e-commerce to grow rapidly. The problem emerges when we consider the next stage of geographical expansion.

A national or large regional e-commerce company entering a new city may have to make a substantial physical investment before demand is sufficiently established. A large retailer entering the same city faces a similar problem. A smaller e-commerce enterprise may find the investment entirely prohibitive. A local retailer may need storage and fulfilment capacity but have neither the capital nor the scale to construct it. Meanwhile, a local real-estate owner may have the land and capital but lack sufficient knowledge of the commercial demand that would justify a specialised facility.

The result is a coordination problem.

The physical infrastructure required by commerce is distributed across different forms of ownership, while the information required to deploy it efficiently is distributed across different kinds of enterprises.

Large e-retailers possess extensive information about demand. Retailers understand their own supply chains. Logistics companies understand movement and utilisation. Real-estate companies understand land and buildings. Local retailers understand their markets. Government possesses another set of information through economic, demographic, infrastructure and administrative systems.

No single participant necessarily possesses the complete picture.

The conventional response has been for the largest commerce enterprises to internalise as many of these functions as possible. The logic is understandable. If a company cannot reliably find the infrastructure it needs, it can build or control the infrastructure itself. Vertical integration then becomes a solution to coordination failure.

But there is a consequence.

The company that controls the customer interface can increasingly also control the warehouse, fulfilment centre and logistics network through which competing commerce enterprises may need to operate. What begins as an operational decision can therefore become a question of market structure.

There is another problem. Infrastructure built for one enterprise is not necessarily infrastructure optimised for the economy as a whole.

If several commerce enterprises separately construct facilities in the same locality, each may rationally be responding to its own requirements. Collectively, however, the result could be duplication of land, buildings, equipment, energy connections, labour and transport capacity. Each network may also operate below its potential utilisation for substantial periods.

A shared infrastructure model can potentially change that calculation.

If a professionally managed facility serves several users, demand can be aggregated. One enterprise's spare capacity can potentially complement another's requirements. Capital-intensive equipment can be utilised across a larger customer base. Infrastructure can be planned according to the aggregate requirements of a market rather than the requirements of one platform.

This is not simply a logistics proposition. It is an industrial-organisation proposition.

The question is whether physical infrastructure should remain largely an internal extension of individual retailers and e-retailers, or whether a specialised industry can emerge whose principal function is to provide the physical capabilities required by commerce to multiple users.

That distinction matters because infrastructure and commerce have fundamentally different economic functions.

A retailer competes for the customer.

An e-commerce platform competes for transactions.

A logistics company competes to move goods efficiently.

A real-estate company develops and manages property.

But an infrastructure operator can perform a different function altogether: providing the physical capacity through which competing commerce enterprises operate.

Once that function becomes visible as a distinct business, it can also become visible to investors, regulators, and other participants in the economy.

That is the conceptual step India may now need to take: from thinking of warehouses and fulfilment facilities merely as assets owned or leased by retailers, to recognising commerce infrastructure as an industry in its own right.

And once an industry becomes visible, a further question follows.

If the enterprises competing in commerce are also allowed to own and operate the infrastructure on which commerce depends, how should the resulting vertical integration be governed?

3. The De-Concentration Question

The emergence of a commerce-infrastructure industry raises an uncomfortable question about the structure of digital commerce. If e-commerce platforms and large retailers increasingly own warehouses, fulfilment centres and other physical infrastructure, are they simultaneously becoming competitors and infrastructure providers to the wider commerce ecosystem?

The answer need not be that they should be prevented from owning infrastructure.

There are good commercial reasons for a retailer or e-retailer to maintain dedicated facilities. A company may require specialised storage, proprietary technology, particular inventory-management systems or infrastructure designed around its own operating model. In some cases, captive infrastructure may be essential to maintaining service quality or developing a new business model.

The problem begins elsewhere: when infrastructure ownership becomes an invisible extension of commercial power.

Consider an e-commerce platform that operates a large marketplace while also controlling a substantial network of warehouses and fulfilment facilities. Its infrastructure decisions are naturally designed around its own commercial requirements. If the same facilities, or associated infrastructure, become important to other retailers or e-commerce businesses, however, the infrastructure provider acquires a different economic significance.

The same applies to a large physical retailer. A retailer that builds extensive warehousing and fulfilment capacity for its own operations is simply investing in its supply chain. But if that infrastructure becomes a significant commercial service available to other retailers, it has effectively entered the infrastructure business.

The distinction is therefore not between large and small enterprises, nor between digital and physical retailers. It is between commerce as a competitive activity and infrastructure as an enabling activity.

This distinction is particularly important because infrastructure can create advantages that are difficult for competitors to reproduce. A large enterprise may be able to spread the cost of warehouses, technology, automation, logistics systems and specialised facilities across a vast customer base. A smaller competitor may have a perfectly viable retail proposition but lack the capital to replicate the underlying physical network.

The result can be a peculiar form of concentration: competition appears to exist at the retail or platform level, while the physical capabilities required to participate in that competition are concentrated among a much smaller group of enterprises.

That is where de-concentration becomes relevant.

De-concentration should not necessarily mean breaking up large companies or preventing them from becoming vertically integrated. Nor should it mean forcing every infrastructure asset into common ownership. Such approaches could reduce investment incentives and prevent enterprises from developing infrastructure that genuinely requires dedicated control.

A more pragmatic approach is to make the different economic functions visible and accountable.

An enterprise that operates a significant commerce-infrastructure business could establish a recognised and separately identifiable infrastructure subsidiary. The subsidiary could own or operate warehouses, fulfilment centres and other qualifying facilities while maintaining transparent accounts, ownership structures and related-party relationships.

The purpose of such separation would not be cosmetic. It would make the infrastructure business identifiable as an economic entity with its own obligations.

The distinction would then become clear:

Company A Retail competes for customers.

Company A E-Commerce competes for digital transactions.

Company A Commerce Infrastructure provides physical infrastructure.

The same corporate group (Company A in the example) could own all three. But the functions would no longer be invisible to regulators, investors, infrastructure users, or competitors.

This is a form of functional separation without mandatory ownership separation.

It recognises an important reality of modern business: large enterprises often create efficiencies precisely because they combine complementary activities. Policy need not automatically dismantle those combinations. Instead, it can ensure that when one of those activities becomes infrastructure for a wider market, its infrastructure function acquires appropriate visibility and obligations.

Such an approach also leaves room for entrepreneurial experimentation.

An e-retailer can build its own fulfilment network. A supermarket chain can develop dedicated warehouses. A logistics company can construct multi-user facilities. A real-estate company can invest in specialised commerce infrastructure. A consortium of retailers can establish shared facilities.

The difference lies in what happens when infrastructure is offered commercially to multiple users.

At that point, a new principle should apply:

Infrastructure that is operated as a shared commercial service should be visible as infrastructure and governed accordingly.

This does not mean that every warehouse must be regulated as critical infrastructure. Nor should every private storage facility be forced into an open-access model. The regulatory framework would need thresholds based on scale, commercial availability, market significance, and the nature of the services provided.

But once an enterprise crosses the relevant threshold and becomes a recognised commerce-infrastructure provider, another principle follows naturally: users that require comparable infrastructure services should have access on transparent and non-discriminatory terms.

This is where the concept of the Commerce Infrastructure Operator begins to emerge.

The objective is not to prevent companies from owning infrastructure. It is to prevent infrastructure ownership from becoming an opaque extension of commercial power.

In other words, the policy challenge is not to eliminate vertical integration. It is to ensure that vertical integration does not quietly become vertical exclusion.

4. The Missing Industry: Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operators

If commerce infrastructure is to become a distinct economic function, India needs an institutional form through which that function can develop. The most important step would be to recognise a new category of enterprise: the Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operator.

The qualification is important. The proposition here is not to create another third-party commerce-logistics industry. India already has logistics companies that provide transportation and associated services to commerce and e-commerce enterprises. Their principal role is to move goods: from manufacturers and suppliers to storage facilities, between distribution points, and ultimately towards retailers and consumers, using road, rail, air, waterways and other modes as appropriate.

The proposed industry would perform a different function.

A Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operator would develop, own, lease, manage or operate physical storage infrastructure for multiple commerce users. Its facilities could include warehouses, fulfilment-storage facilities, cold stores, specialised storage facilities and, where commercially viable, smaller urban or neighbourhood storage centres. The defining characteristic would be the provision of safe, reliable and professionally managed storage capacity to multiple commerce enterprises.

The distinction can therefore be expressed simply:

Storage infrastructure stores goods; commerce-logistics operators move them.

The two functions are complementary, but they need not be combined within the same enterprise.

This distinction matters because third-party commerce-logistics companies have already emerged precisely to solve the transportation problem for commerce. A retailer or e-retailer does not necessarily need to own a fleet of trucks, rail-linked logistics capacity or other transportation assets. It can contract a specialist logistics provider that moves goods between different locations and across different modes of transport.

The same logic can now be extended to physical storage.

A retailer or e-retailer need not necessarily build or lease a dedicated warehouse in every city. It could contract a specialist storage-infrastructure operator instead. That operator would provide the physical facility, equipment, security, storage environment, and associated in-facility services - while transportation between that facility and other points would remain the responsibility of the relevant logistics provider or the commerce enterprise itself.

4.1 Specialising the Work as Well as the Infrastructure

The distinction is not merely about buildings. It can create a more specialised division of labour.

Each storage centre would have its own workforce responsible for activities within the facility: receiving goods, inspection and verification, unloading and put-away, inventory positioning, stock management, storage-condition management, picking and packing where those services form part of the facility's offering, category-specific handling, stock reconciliation, safety and security, and preparation of goods for dispatch.

Transportation workers would have a different responsibility. Drivers, transport crews, fleet managers and other logistics personnel would be responsible for moving goods between locations and for handling them during transportation.

There would naturally be interfaces between the two functions. Goods have to be handed over, loading and unloading have to be coordinated, documentation has to be completed and dispatches have to be prepared. But the institutional responsibility can remain clear:

The storage operator is responsible for the workforce and activities within the storage facility; the logistics operator is responsible for the movement and in-transit handling of goods.

Such a division could produce an important long-term capability-building effect.

A storage operator serving many commerce enterprises would gradually accumulate expertise in the physical characteristics and handling requirements of different categories of goods. A facility handling food, pharmaceuticals, electronics, apparel, fragile products, perishables or other specialised categories would develop different operational systems, equipment, safety procedures and workforce skills.

The logistics operator could develop a corresponding body of knowledge around transportation and in-transit handling.

Over time, therefore, two specialised knowledge economies could emerge:

Storage operators become increasingly sophisticated in storing and handling goods within facilities.

Commerce-logistics operators become increasingly sophisticated in transporting and handling goods in transit.

This is more than organisational neatness. It is a mechanism through which occupational knowledge can accumulate.

Instead of every large retailer and e-retailer having to develop its own parallel capabilities in storage and transportation, specialised enterprises can develop these capabilities across a much larger customer base. Their employees can acquire deeper category-specific expertise, training can become more specialised, and operational standards can progressively improve.

The human dimension is therefore integral to the proposed infrastructure industry. The objective is not simply to create warehouses and rent out square footage. It is to create specialised occupations, skills, and institutional capabilities around the safe and reliable storage of goods.

The same logic could benefit the logistics workforce. If third-party commerce-logistics companies can concentrate more heavily on transportation, they can devote greater managerial and financial attention to drivers, delivery personnel, loading crews, fleet operators, and other workers whose work determines the quality of transportation and delivery.

The separation could therefore help move commerce logistics away from a collection of loosely connected tasks towards more clearly defined professional domains.

4.2 From Warehouses as Property to Storage as Infrastructure

This also changes the economic character of the storage facility itself.

A local property owner may possess land and capital but lack the operational expertise to develop a sophisticated commerce-storage facility. A Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operator can bring that expertise, while the property owner provides or finances the underlying real estate.

The relationship becomes:

real estate → storage infrastructure operator → multiple commerce enterprises

rather than simply:

real estate → warehouse → single large tenant

The difference is particularly significant in smaller cities. A local market may not generate enough demand for separate dedicated storage facilities for every e-retailer, organised retailer, quick-commerce company or group of local retailers. But aggregate demand may justify professionally operated multi-user storage infrastructure.

The storage operator therefore becomes an aggregator of physical storage capacity and specialised capability, rather than a competitor in retail or a substitute for transportation logistics.

This could also complement the existing third-party commerce-logistics industry. A logistics company would have greater flexibility if it could access a network of professionally operated storage facilities across cities rather than having to negotiate separately with numerous retailers or property owners. Similarly, a storage operator could serve multiple logistics companies rather than becoming tied to one transportation network.

The result could be a more modular commerce infrastructure system:

specialised storage infrastructure & workforce + specialised logistics networks & workforce + competing commerce enterprises.

Such modularity is particularly valuable for smaller commerce businesses. A young e-commerce company does not need to reproduce the physical infrastructure of a national platform merely to enter a new city. It can access appropriate storage capacity from a recognised operator and contract transportation and delivery services separately.

The same principle can apply to a local retailer association seeking collective storage, a regional retail chain expanding into new markets, or a D-to-C company that needs regional inventory positioning without building its own warehouse network.

The proposed industry is therefore not intended to replace logistics. It is intended to complete the specialisation of the physical layer of commerce.

Just as a commerce enterprise does not necessarily need to own the trucks that move its goods, it need not necessarily own the warehouses in which those goods are stored.

What India currently has in abundance is warehousing as property and logistics as a service. What it could develop more deliberately is storage infrastructure as a specialised, multi-user industry with its own capital, workforce, technology, standards, and accumulated knowledge.

That is the industry whose time has come and whose potential rules of access, transparency, and non-discrimination now need to be considered.

5. Building an Open-Access Storage Infrastructure Market

Recognising Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operators as a distinct industry would solve only half the problem. The other half is ensuring that the infrastructure they create remains genuinely available to the commerce ecosystem rather than becoming another instrument of vertical concentration.

This is where the principle of open access becomes central.

Open access does not mean that every storage facility must be available to every enterprise at all times, nor that an operator must accept every potential customer irrespective of capacity, operational requirements or commercial risk. Storage is a commercial service, and legitimate differences between users will always exist.

A pharmaceutical company may require temperature-controlled storage. A food company may require specialised hygiene standards. An electronics company may require enhanced security. A high-volume retailer may require substantially more capacity than a small D2C enterprise. A customer requiring guaranteed peak-season capacity may reasonably pay differently from one seeking occasional storage.

The principle should therefore be:

Equal rate for equal service.

Where two users require comparable storage capacity and comparable services under comparable commercial conditions, they should not be subjected to materially different terms merely because one is affiliated with, larger than, or commercially favoured by the infrastructure operator.

This principle would become particularly important when a Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operator is owned by a retailer or e-retailer.

There is nothing inherently wrong with such ownership. A large e-commerce enterprise may have substantial knowledge of storage operations and the capital required to establish high-quality facilities. It may also have legitimate reasons for developing infrastructure beyond its own immediate requirements.

But once its infrastructure subsidiary is formally recognised as a multi-user storage operator, its relationship with its parent commerce enterprise becomes a matter of regulatory significance.

The infrastructure subsidiary should therefore be visibly separate, with disclosed ownership and related-party relationships. Its commercial dealings with its parent or other affiliated enterprises should be identifiable. Capacity allocation and pricing should be subject to appropriate transparency requirements.

The objective is not to prevent the affiliated commerce enterprise from using the infrastructure. It should be able to do so, just like any other customer.

The objective is to prevent the infrastructure operator from quietly becoming a mechanism through which the parent company receives preferential access to infrastructure that competitors cannot obtain on equivalent terms.

This distinction becomes particularly important as the industry develops.

A storage operator might initially construct a facility primarily for one anchor customer. Over time, unused capacity may be offered to other retailers. Alternatively, a facility might be designed from the beginning as a multi-user centre. In either case, once it is operating commercially as shared infrastructure, its access arrangements should become visible.

The same principle should apply if a large physical retailer develops a storage subsidiary.

A supermarket chain may require extensive regional storage for its own stores. It should remain free to build that capacity. But if the subsidiary begins offering substantial capacity to external retailers, it should not be able to operate simultaneously as an apparently independent infrastructure provider while using opaque preferential arrangements to reinforce the parent retailer's competitive position.

The regulatory framework should therefore distinguish between captive storage and commercially shared storage.

Captive storage would remain primarily an internal business function. A retailer or e-retailer could own and operate facilities for its own requirements.

Commercially shared storage would constitute a distinct infrastructure activity. Once an operator crosses an appropriate threshold of external commercial activity, it could be required to register or qualify as a Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operator and comply with the relevant open-access obligations.

This would create a graduated rather than an absolutist regulatory model.

The government would not need to regulate every warehouse in the country. Nor would it need to determine which enterprises should build which facilities.

It would establish a framework within which commercially shared storage infrastructure becomes visible and accountable.

The framework could include several basic requirements.

5.1 Visibility of Ownership and Affiliation

The ownership of a recognised storage infrastructure operator should be transparent, including material beneficial ownership and relationships with commerce enterprises using its facilities.

This would allow competitors, investors and regulators to understand whether an infrastructure provider is genuinely independent or part of a larger retail or e-commerce group.

5.2 Transparent Service Categories and Pricing

Operators should establish identifiable categories of storage services, with clearly defined specifications. Pricing can vary according to legitimate differences in service requirements, but unexplained preferential pricing for affiliated or favoured commerce enterprises should not be permitted.

The objective is not price regulation in the conventional sense. It is commercial transparency and non-discrimination.

5.3 Non-Discriminatory Capacity Allocation

During periods of constrained capacity, particularly festive seasons or other demand peaks, an operator should have transparent rules for allocating available capacity.

Otherwise, an affiliated retailer could potentially reserve disproportionate capacity while competitors are told that facilities are unavailable.

Capacity allocation therefore needs to become part of the infrastructure governance framework.

5.4 Transparent Related-Party Transactions

Transactions between a storage operator and an affiliated commerce enterprise should be appropriately disclosed and conducted on transparent commercial terms.

This would prevent an infrastructure subsidiary from becoming merely an accounting structure through which preferential treatment is hidden.

5.5 Commercially Reasonable Access

Open access should also protect the operator. A storage infrastructure provider should not be required to accept commercially unreasonable arrangements that expose it to disproportionate operational or financial risk.

Eligibility criteria can therefore legitimately exist, provided they are objective, transparent, and applied consistently.

This is an important balance. Open access is not the same as compulsory access on any terms demanded by a potential customer.

The broader principle is that infrastructure operators should be free to compete on quality, location, reliability, technology, service levels, and efficiency, while customers should be able to choose among competing operators.

That, in turn, would create the possibility of a genuine market for storage infrastructure.

A retailer could compare facilities in different locations. An e-commerce company could contract storage capacity without building its own facility. A D-to-C enterprise could enter a new city without making a large upfront property investment. A retailer association could negotiate capacity for its members. Logistics companies could access storage networks across multiple markets.

Competition would therefore occur between infrastructure operators as well as between the commerce enterprises using them.

This is the essential difference between an open-access infrastructure industry and a regulated monopoly.

The objective is not to create one national storage network and subject it to centralised control. It is to encourage many storage infrastructure operators - operating at different scales and specialising in different categories and geographies, while ensuring that commercially significant shared infrastructure does not become an opaque competitive weapon.

The resulting architecture could therefore be both decentralised and regulated:

many owners, many operators, many users — but transparent rules governing access.

Such an arrangement would allow India to capture the efficiencies of shared infrastructure without requiring the state to determine who should own every warehouse or how every retailer should organise its supply chain.

The larger opportunity is that, once such an industry becomes visible, it can begin to attract another category of participant: local real-estate owners and developers who may currently possess the physical assets but lack the commercial intelligence and operational capability to turn them into specialised storage infrastructure.

That is where the next layer of the model begins.

7. De-Concentrating Capability, Not Scale

The strongest case for an open-access commerce-storage industry may ultimately be found not in its implications for Amazon, quick commerce, or large organised retailers, but in what it could do for the thousands of smaller enterprises that constitute India's retail economy.

The objective should not be to prevent large retailers and e-retailers from becoming large. Nor should it be to preserve every existing small retailer in its present form. Businesses should be allowed to compete, expand, innovate, fail and be replaced.

The more useful objective is to ensure that access to foundational commerce capabilities does not depend entirely on the scale of the enterprise.

A large retailer will inevitably possess advantages that a small retailer cannot reproduce. It may have greater purchasing power, stronger brands, sophisticated technology, larger marketing budgets and more extensive supply chains. An e-commerce platform may have superior search technology, customer data, digital payments infrastructure, and a large installed customer base.

Those are legitimate sources of competitive advantage.

But having to construct or control a warehouse network simply to enter a new market is a different kind of advantage. It is an infrastructural barrier to entry.

If storage infrastructure becomes available as a specialised service, a smaller enterprise can acquire access to scale without acquiring ownership of scale.

That distinction could be transformative.

A small e-commerce company does not need to build a warehouse in every city. It can purchase storage capacity where it needs it.

A regional retailer does not need to construct a dedicated distribution facility before entering every new market.

A D-to-C enterprise can position inventory closer to consumers without building its own regional network.

A local retailer association can aggregate demand from its members and negotiate storage capacity without necessarily becoming a warehouse operator itself.

A neighbourhood retailer can potentially gain access to storage infrastructure that previously would have been economically available only to much larger businesses.

In each case, the enterprise remains independent while accessing a capability that has been industrialised by another specialised provider.

7.1 Equal Opportunity Rather Than Protectionism

This distinction is important because the proposal should not become another argument for protecting small retailers from competition.

There is a legitimate difference between protecting a business from competition and ensuring that businesses can access the basic infrastructure necessary to participate in competition.

If a large retailer offers better prices, wider assortment or superior customer experience, it should be able to win customers.

If an e-commerce platform offers better search, convenience or delivery, it should be able to expand.

Likewise, a local retailer should be able to compete through proximity, local knowledge, relationships, personalisation and specialised assortment.

The role of public policy is not to predetermine which of these models should succeed.

It is to prevent the physical infrastructure underlying commerce from becoming an artificial barrier that disproportionately favours enterprises capable of owning it themselves.

This is why the proposal is better understood as equal opportunity in infrastructure rather than protectionism.

The market remains competitive above the infrastructure layer.

Indeed, the existence of an open storage-infrastructure market could make competition more intense because new entrants would have fewer reasons to reproduce the fixed infrastructure of incumbents.

7.2 The Role of Kirana 2.0

This is where the proposition connects naturally with the broader necessity of modernisation of neighbourhood retail.

The future of the kirana does not necessarily have to be defined by resistance to organised retail or e-commerce. A modern neighbourhood retailer could acquire many of the capabilities of larger competitors while retaining local ownership and local customer relationships.

Shared storage could become one of those capabilities.

A group of retailers in a town could collectively contract storage capacity. A retailer association could negotiate with a Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operator. A regional procurement organisation could combine storage with its B2B operations. Digital platforms could connect local retailers to broader markets.

The result would not be the transformation of every kirana into a miniature Amazon.

It would be something more practical:

A locally owned retailer with access to infrastructure operating at a scale it could not economically own itself.

That is the essence of de-concentration.

Scale remains available, but ownership of scale is no longer the only route to accessing it.

7.3 Legitimacy as Part of the Infrastructure Ecosystem

An open infrastructure system also requires a degree of institutional legitimacy from the businesses that use it.

If Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operators are expected to make long-term investments, they need customers and partners whose own businesses are sufficiently transparent and credible. Investors, lenders, landlords, and logistics companies likewise need confidence that the commerce storage infrastructure operators around which infrastructure is being developed are legitimate businesses with accountable ownership and realistic long-term plans.

This does not mean that government should attempt to predict which start-ups will succeed.

It means that enterprises participating in the formal commerce infrastructure ecosystem should be identifiable and accountable.

Ownership should be transparent. Beneficial ownership should be disclosed where required. Contracts should be enforceable. Financial and regulatory obligations should be met. Enterprises making substantial commitments should provide sufficient information to their counterparties and investors to enable informed commercial decisions.

These things matter particularly for smaller and newer businesses.

An open infrastructure system should lower the infrastructure barriers to entry, not lower standards of commercial accountability.

Indeed, the two objectives can reinforce one another. If commerce enterprises can access infrastructure without making enormous fixed investments, they can potentially enter markets with more modest capital requirements. At the same time, because they are operating within a recognised commercial ecosystem, infrastructure providers and investors can assess them on transparent criteria.

7.4 Professionalising the Ecosystem

The same principle applies to the people and institutions that support commerce.

Storage operators can develop specialised storage occupations and employment. 

Logistics companies can develop specialised transportation and delivery capabilities.

Retailers can concentrate on merchandising, customer relationships and commerce.

Technology companies can concentrate on digital coordination and intelligence.

Real-estate companies can concentrate on property and infrastructure investment.

The objective is therefore not simply to redistribute warehouses. It is to create specialised capability ecosystems around different functions of commerce.

Over time, this could produce an economy in which an enterprise can become highly specialised without becoming vertically integrated across the entire commerce chain.

That matters for productivity.

A small retailer does not need to be simultaneously an expert in warehouse management, transportation, software, payments, and consumer marketing.

A logistics company does not need to become a retailer.

A storage operator does not need to become an e-commerce platform.

A real-estate developer does not need to become a retailer merely to invest in commerce infrastructure.

Each can become better at its own function while relying on a network of specialised institutions.

This is the deeper meaning of de-concentration.

It is not the elimination of scale.

It is the distribution of access to scale across a larger number of independent enterprises.

If India can achieve that, large commerce enterprises can continue to grow, local retailers can continue to evolve, new e-commerce businesses can enter markets, and infrastructure investors can find new opportunities — without requiring every participant to own the entire physical architecture of commerce.

The question then becomes how the different layers of this ecosystem should fit together, and what roles the Central government, State governments and the private sector should play in enabling it.

8. Building a National Storage Infrastructure Layer for Commerce

The emergence of Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operators would not require the Indian state to construct a new public warehousing system. Nor would it require existing retailers, e-commerce companies, logistics firms or real-estate businesses to abandon infrastructure they already own. The objective is more precise: to recognise storage infrastructure as a distinct economic function and create an institutional framework within which that function can become increasingly specialised, contestable and accessible.

The Central government’s role would therefore begin with recognition. A Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operator could be defined as an enterprise that develops, owns, leases or operates storage facilities for multiple commerce users. The regulatory framework could establish thresholds at which such facilities become recognised commercial infrastructure, together with requirements concerning ownership disclosure, related-party relationships, service categories, pricing transparency, capacity allocation and non-discriminatory access.

The principle need not be conventional price regulation. Equal rate for equal service is a more appropriate starting point. Different storage requirements will legitimately command different prices, but comparable users receiving comparable services should not face discriminatory treatment because one happens to compete with the operator’s affiliated commerce business. This would make open access a practical commercial principle rather than a declaration of intent.

8.1 A Layered Institutional Architecture

The Centre could establish the broad framework, standards and reporting architecture, while integrating storage infrastructure into its industrial, urban, and commerce development policies. State governments and local governments could identify suitable areas for commercial storage, facilitate land-use, and infrastructure coordination, and incorporate storage capacity into the planning of emerging commercial centres.

The private sector would remain the principal builder and operator. Real-estate developers could provide land and buildings; storage operators could provide specialised operational capability; financial institutions could finance the resulting infrastructure; technology companies could provide inventory, monitoring and management systems; and commerce enterprises could compete for customers without each having to reproduce the entire physical storage network.

The logistics industry would remain a distinct layer. Logistics operators would continue to specialise in transportation and in-transit handling, while storage operators would specialise in what happens before and after that movement. The boundary between the two would be operationally connected but institutionally clear.

This architecture also creates a role for information and information technology. Storage operators could report aggregated information on capacity, utilisation, broad category requirements, and geographical infrastructure gaps. Proper safeguards would be required for commercially sensitive information, but the resulting intelligence could help governments, infrastructure investors, and real-estate developers understand where additional capacity is needed without requiring the state to collect granular retail data itself.

8.2 From Individual Infrastructure to Shared National Capability

The deeper significance of this model lies beyond warehousing.

India's commerce economy is becoming geographically distributed. Digital platforms can reach places where their physical infrastructure has not yet developed, while local retailers possess physical proximity without necessarily possessing the infrastructure, technology, and organisational capabilities required for modern commerce. Between these two realities lies an opportunity to build a shared physical layer.

Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operators could provide that layer.

The result would not be a system in which every retailer becomes equally large, equally efficient, or equally successful. Markets will continue to produce differences in scale, productivity, purchasing power, and customer appeal. Nor should the purpose be to prevent large enterprises from building infrastructure for themselves. Their ability to invest remains an important source of economic capacity.

The objective is instead to ensure that ownership of infrastructure is not the only route to access to infrastructure.

That distinction changes the meaning of de-concentration. It does not require dismantling scale. It requires making important economic capabilities available beyond the enterprises that happen to own them. It turns storage from an invisible extension of individual commerce businesses into a visible, professional, and potentially open-access infrastructure industry.

9. Conclusion

India's commerce economy is becoming geographically distributed. Digital platforms can reach places where sophisticated physical infrastructure has not yet developed, while local retailers possess physical proximity without necessarily possessing the infrastructure, technology and organisational capabilities required for modern commerce. The opportunity, therefore, is to build a shared physical layer between digital reach and local economic activity.

Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operators could provide precisely that layer. They would allow storage capacity, specialised handling capabilities, and the associated organisational knowledge to become infrastructure that multiple enterprises can access, rather than capabilities that every commerce enterprise must independently reproduce. This would allow the benefits of scale to travel through the economy without requiring every participant to own the assets that create that scale.

The objective is not to make every retailer equally large, equally efficient, or equally successful. Markets should continue to reward differences in productivity, purchasing power, assortment, technology, customer experience, and business models. Nor should large retailers or e-commerce platforms be prevented from building infrastructure for their own requirements. The essential distinction is between owning infrastructure and controlling access to infrastructure.

That is where the broader meaning of de-concentration emerges. It need not mean dismantling large enterprises. It can mean ensuring that important economic capabilities are not permanently locked inside them. Making infrastructure functions visible, specialised, professionally operated, and open to multiple legitimate users - can distribute access to scale without artificially distributing business outcomes.

India has already spent decades building the networks through which commerce can move information, payments, and orders. The next stage is to build the physical infrastructure through which goods can be stored, handled, and made available across an increasingly distributed economy. A national network of open-access Commerce Storage Infrastructure Operators could become one part of that architecture.

The strategic proposition, therefore, is simple: let commerce compete, but let the infrastructure on which commerce depends become more open. Large enterprises can remain large, small enterprises can remain independent, logistics companies can specialise in movement, real-estate owners can become infrastructure investors, and storage operators can build a new professional industry around shared physical capacity. De-concentration would then become not a project of breaking up scale, but a project of distributing access to it.