Kishore Biyani, founder and CEO of Future Group, also known as the ‘king of Indian retail’, recently said in interview with YouTuber Raj Shamani that he lost business worth Rs 7000 crore in 3 months during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kishore Biyani also talked about the tussle between Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon over the acquisition of Future Group.
“I think one can keep talking about what went wrong and what went right but if we look at it in a positive way, we maintained the leadership from the time we started. We were ahead of the curve in terms of offering technology, customer proposition and I think during the journey of being the leader, we stretched our balance sheet. FDI was not allowed in retail so we were not able to get FDI into the company as much as wanted…at that point all the big investors were foreigners,” he said.
“We were not able to handle the COVID event. When COVID happened we lost business of Rs 7,000 crore in three months. To recover from that was very difficult because you are working on bank lines and everything gets into a jam. And then we decided that there was no other option but to settle and sell out,” added Kishore Biyani.
Talking about the tussle between Reliance and Amazon, Biyani added that it increasing the problem for the company. “We found a suitor who was willing to buy and extinguish all the liabilities and continue with it. But then that deal got into legal issues and then it could not happen. Things didn’t go the way we wanted it to. We were caught in between two leaders of the world and things didn’t work the way we wanted it to,” he said.
It is to be noted that Future Group decided to sell its assets to Reliance Industries in 2020 but Amazon filed a case and this led to the stalling of Kishore Bayani’s plan to sell Future Group’s assets worth USD 3.4 billion to Mukesh Ambani. Amazon then filed a case in Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) to successfully stop the sale and Amazon and Future Group also filed cases against each other in Indian courts, including the Supreme Court.
Who is Kishore Biyani?
Kishore Biyani, the founder and CEO of the parent organisation, the Future Group, founded Big Bazaar in 2001. Kishore Biyani holds the position of Non-Executive Vice Chairman of the Company's Board. He serves as the Group CEO of the Future Group and the Managing Director of Future Retail Ltd. The collective consists of the convenience store chain EasyDay, the food retailer Food Hall and the hypermarket brand Big Bazaar.
