Kishore Biyani | Success story of “India’s Modern Retail King”

Retail business tycoon Kishore Biyani is one of the successful Indian entrepreneurs who triggered the concept of retail supermarkets. The success of the story of Biyani started with the tiny stall, then expanded online, building an omnichannel retail business. He was quick at conceptualizing the ideas, and his story detects the success of those ideas off the ground. Kishore is the founder of companies such as Pantaloon Retail, Big Bazaar, and Future Group.

The early life of Kishore Biyani

Kishore Biyani was born on August 9, 1961, to a middle-class trading family in Nimbi Jodha in Rajasthan and completed his graduation in the field of Commerce from the H.R.College. He grew up in a business-centric family, which started with his grandfather, and he focused less on studies than business. He spent much time with his family business and retail shops to look at the flow.
After graduation, he joined Bansi Silk Mills, which traded fabric but wasn’t happy with the flow of work culture. Hence he stepped out to see the market and filtered market popularity which turned out to be “stonewashed” fabric trousers.
His first entrepreneurial journey started with setting up a trouser shop, a local mill, and garments. That’s how he began the first milestone of his entrepreneurial success story.

Kishore Biyani entrepreneurial Journey

It was hype time that Kishore came up with their brand of fabric for men’s trousers called – “W.B.B. – white, brown, and blue .”In demand for the fabric, it sold more than 30,000 to 40,000 meters of the material each month. That’s where the birth of Pantaloon started as a new garment manufacturing company called “Manz Wear Private Ltd.” Pantaloon mainly symbolizes the Urdu word for trousers and is closer to the Italian fashion house Patloon.
Manz Wear picked up gradually, stepping out of the box to other states. Initially started in Goa, which went on across every length and breadth of the country.

Big Bazaar journey

Finally, in 1997, renting and converting 10,000 square feet in Kolkata into an ample retail market space Biyani opened his first department store. Since the day of start to the end of 22 days, he successfully set up two more large stores in the same place. Hence officially, he opened departmental store series under the Big Bazaar brand in 2001. Seeing through by 2009, it hit a century of stores across the country. 300 Million, one-fourth of the population visits or revisits the Big Bazaar stores annually.

Similar to the brand name of Big Bazaar, their work brand name of Big Bazaar signifies a bigger version of any market. The prominent market supplies Food Products, Eatables, Grocery Kitchen Appliances, Home and Furniture, Jewelry, Electronics, Toiletries, Toys, Stationery, Clothing, and Footwear. Big Bazaar has subsidiary branches such as Food Bazaar, Pantaloons, eZone, and Fbb. Further planning to acquire smaller cities and work on business strategies.

Future Group

One portal to all his retail business management includes financial services, insurance, brand development, and logistics. That consist of all the Retails Big Bazaar, Central Food Bazaar, Pantaloons, Ezone, Home Town, and Planet Sports. It also operates a popular shopping portal, futurebazaar.com, and a rural retail chain, Aadhar. Presently, the company’s existing food retail chains comprise the no-frills, small format K.B.’sK.B.’s fair price stores, Food Bazaar and Food Rite. And further planning to focus on Foodhall in the retail food space.

Awards and achievements

With the success story of entrepreneurship, Kishore serves millions of customers worldwide. For which he won prominent awards such as “CNBC Awaaz Consumer Awards” (2009), “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young (2006), “Retail Face of the Year” Images Retail Awards (2005), “Most Admired Retailer of the Year” (2004), “C.E.O. of the Year” (2001) and many more.
He also authored the book ‘It Happened In India.’ which traces his struggle, failures, restlessness, and sheer grit. And his book sold around 100,000 copies, more than any other business book published in India. Also called ‘the Sam Walton of India.’

Personal Life of Kishore Biyani

Biyani got married at the age of 22 to Sangita Rathi. The couple has two children, namely Ashni and Avni. His daughter Ashni is the group’s innovation and graduated from textile design Parsons, New York. And Avni studied sociology at New York University. He worked in different career fields like trading, dance festival organizer, and filmmaker, which was a big failure.

Inspiration

Kishore Biyani has one personal army in building the retail empire. Forbes recognizes him among 2019 India’s Richest list based on revenue collected by the future group. As an inspiring youngster, he showed that constantly experimenting and trying out new ideas makes a person successful. His only mantra is to continue to strive to embrace success in the future.