Kishore Biyani, India's Sam Walton, is the founder and CEO of the Future Group. He was born on August 9, 1961.
Kishore is the man who has taken the retail industry by storm and now has a long list of accomplishments, but he has also had his fair share of setbacks! The Future Group owns over 70 million square feet of retail space in 90 cities and 60 rural regions, with plans to add another 9 million square feet in the coming years. He co-wrote his own autobiography, "It Happened in India: the Story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central, and the Great Indian Consumer," with Dipayan Baishya. The book has sold almost 100,000 copies thus far, substantially more than any other business book published in India.
Kishore holds a bachelor's degree in commerce from H.R. College and plays tennis, where he is occasionally seen betting before the game begins. Sangita Biyani is his wife, and they have two children. He lives in Mumbai. His oldest daughter, Ashni, works as a director at Future Ideas, the company's innovation and incubation unit (textile design graduate from Parsons, New York).
Kishore Biyani & Future Group's Beginnings
Kishore Biyani, India's current retail pin-up boy, has worked in a range of roles during his career, including as a trader and a failed filmmaker. Before settling down to become an innovative merchant, he worked as a dance festival organiser. Kishore, unlike many others at his level, was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has climbed the corporate ladder on his own.
Kishore grew raised in a business family, or should we say, business is literally in his blood and ancestry, stretching back to his grandparents; he was never very interested in academics and merely pushed himself to graduation. He was regularly spotted spending the majority of his days outside, exploring new regions and understanding the real world, believing that "college or business school may be wonderful for managers, but not for entrepreneurs."
In truth, his career started while he was nearing the end of his education!
Kishore had joined the family's fabric-trading enterprise, "Bansi Silk Mills," with his father, brothers, and two older relatives. Kishore did show up for work, but he couldn't seem to find the zeal and independence he craved, and he was subdued by the company's traditional business culture, so he would leave after 2 or 3 hours. He was vehemently opposed to the corporation's operations and considered that its mentality and business approach were flawed.
It was back in the early 1980s! His first entrepreneurial success came when he noticed some of his acquaintances wearing "stonewashed" fabric trousers, a popular material at the time. He found a local mill that made that kind of cloth immediately away and made his first profit by selling a few hundred thousand rupees worth of material to a few garment manufacturers and shops in the city.
Kishore had eaten enough blood and was ready for more! He started looking for something fresh, something unusual. He even collaborated with a couple of his older cousins who had started their own enterprises, specialising in plastic, grooved paperboards, and packaging, but it wasn't enough to sustain his excitement.
He was looking for a company or concept that could reach the greatest number of individuals in the country. He had an insight at that point, and the unthinkable happened.
"WBB - white, brown, and blue," he named his fabric line for men's trousers.
Future Group's Rise, Fall, and Resurrection
And it was from here that the "Future Group" became well-known! This is Kishore Biyani's success tale.
Rise
He exceeded the market's peak demand in a short period of time, selling more than 30,000 to 40,000 metres of material every month. In 1987, Kishore established "Manz Wear Private Ltd." and began selling his apparel under the brand name "Pantaloon," which he chose because it suggested the feel of an Italian fashion house while also being closer to patloon (an Urdu word for trousers).
"Getting your first million is always challenging," says the expert, as the saying goes, and the company's early stages were not as simple as one might expect!
Almost everyone Kishore knew projected the company's failure when it first began, and the worst thing was that he didn't have a family corporation to fall back on. Among other reasons, they were forbidden from participating in retail functions, brands refused to provide them, banks were hesitant to lend to them, and the merchants' organisation broke them off from their group. Basically, it was a tough moment for them – but "it was fun!" as Kishore puts it.
Anyway, Manz Wear continued to grow nicely and was now supplying a few clothing retailers; however, Kishore was dissatisfied and desired to widen his horizons.
Following that, he established a chain of franchise stores selling only Pantaloon trousers, and in 1991, Pantaloon Shoppe opened its first store outside of the state in Goa, subsequently expanding to include a men's fashion line. In comparison to the previous sequence of events, the year 92 experienced the most significant increase. This year, Kishore, or rather, his company, entered the stock market in a calculated attempt to keep the fuel flowing, which was the primary prerequisite for his further expansion!
He not only opened a lot of stores, but he also spent a lot of money on marketing, and by the time he was 94, the Pantaloon franchise had grown to a 9 million laying golden egg enterprise. Their management team found it impossible to visit each of their locations to assess service quality, which harmed some of the older businesses, while commission-based franchisees were more interested with immediate profits than with customer service.
In 1996, when he came across a 10,000 sq ft building in Kolkata, Kishore began looking at the prospect of transforming Pantaloon into his own large-format retail stores to solve the problem.
Because the city's largest establishments at the time were no larger than 4,000 square feet, the concept, location, and timing were all appropriate. As a result, in August 1997, the first Pantaloons department store opened to the public. Not long after, Kishore started work on his next big project, Big Bazaar, a hypermarket with a splash of chaos (stores that were crowded, noisy, and a bit messy on purpose). In his book, Kishore stated, "Part of his success is down to serendipity - being in the right business, at the right time, in the right country." The timing was also excellent; his target audience, the Indian middle class, had matured to the stage where they now had money to spend and were just looking for modern ways to do so!
In 2001, he opened the first Big Bazaar in Kolkata, followed by two more in 22 days. Since then, he has expanded his business to over 100 locations around the country, serving over 2 million people each week.
Fall
The company suffered a setback, despite the fact that things were going well and fortune seemed to be falling at his feet.
It all started with a small setback that brought the company's operations to a halt, owing to the fact that two of its films, "Na Tum Jaano Na Hum" (2002) and "Chura Liya Hai Tumne" (2003), were huge flops in Bollywood. The company's worst catastrophe, though, came when the recession hit hard. Massive amounts of debt accumulated as a result of the rash expansion were largely to blame for the disaster.
Due to the abrupt adjustment, Pantaloon had to postpone the opening of up to 30 of its stores. They also had to downsize a few of their other locations. Due to rising debt, they were forced to give up over 2 million square feet of retail space, renovate half of the Big Bazaar hypermarkets he managed, sell off businesses, and restructure operations. Even more devastating was the fact that Aditya Birla bought a 50.1 percent stake in their Pantaloons business as part of these deals!
As painful as these acquisitions were, they were part of Kishore's larger plan, which included a shift away from'sasta' (inexpensive in Hindi) to high-value, high-margin commodities, as well as an increase in production and efficiency rather than expansion. Kishore's ultimate ambition was to return to being "cash-rich and doing acquisitions."
Comeback
And, as planned, the company has gradually recovered from its low points, and Kishore, the Managing Director of Future Retail Ltd, India's largest publicly traded retail company, is now back and ready to discuss growth. Everyone soon recognised his idea and the work he was doing, and now you can't ignore him, whether you like him or not. Today, the firm has grown into its own empires, all of which eventually fall under the umbrella of Future Group! The company is currently known for having a strong presence in the Indian retail and fashion industries, thanks to its successful supermarket branches.
Pantaloon Retail stores now occupy more than 70 million square feet of retail space across the country, employ more than 35,000 people, attract more than one-fourth of the country's population (300 million people) every year, generate a net profit of more than INR 960.18 crores ($150 million) annually, and have expanded into other fields.
Achievements
Mr. Kishore Biyani has received various awards, including: - I received the "CNBC Awaaz Consumer Awards" (2009)
• At the ceremony, Pantaloon Retail was honoured "International Retailer of the Year" (2007)
• He was selected "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young (2006)
• "Retail Face of the Year" at the Images Retail Awards (2005)
• "The Most Admired Retailer of the Year" (2004)
• A title granted to a company's chief executive officer is "CEO of the Year" (2001)
Conclusion
Kishore is one of the few people who has developed a successful business without the assistance of godfathers or family members.
And, like with any other human being or brilliant businessman, not everything Mr. Kishore Biyani has undertaken has worked out in his favour.
But it hasn't stopped him from constantly experimenting and trying out new ideas, as any successful person would! Continue to work hard.
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