Some good news, at least reasonably so, amid the doom. The short-term impact of the coronavirus pandemic on retailers in the country will be severe, but retail sales recovery period for India is expected to kick-start from the first week of May subject to the lockdown not being extended further, a report by Capillary Technologies said. The report said until March 16, the consumer retail sales and walk-ins did not see much dip compared to last year and this could be due to festive shopping (Ugadi, Gudi Padwa, Navratri etc). "However, the India consumer retail witnessed a big drop in sales by 46 per cent and 55 per cent fall in the number of customers per store from March 17 to 25, which is expected to drop further in the coming weeks due to the ongoing nation-wide lockdown," it added.