Kishore Biyani: The Man They Wrote Off.

Retail King of India.

Two years ago, no one took Kishore Biyani seriously. His company, Pantaloon Retail, was seen as a one-man show. Biyani himself was regarded as unpredictable, and not a long-term bet. Today, he is the biggest retailer in India. In two years, Kishore Biyani has bounced back to become India's largest retailer. Here's how the maverick ignored conventional wisdom on retailing, and won.

By M. Rajshekhar

His motto: "Rewrite the rules but retain the values", seems to have worked well for Kishore Biyani, MD, Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd. In being chosen as the 'retail face of the year' by Images Retail, Biyani's efforts at 'rebranding' Indian retail has been recognised. "Pantaloon will innovate a pan-Indian model of retailing, rather than copy the western model," says Biyani.

Biyani was chosen for the award through a nationwide industry poll after a performance assessment by global retail consultants, KSA Technopak, Knowledge Partners and a jury chaired by McKinsey and Co.

The awards included 13 categories in retail segments such as fashion, catering services, food and grocery, health and beauty, leisure, consumer electronics and entertainment. The others nominated for the title included the likes of BS Nagesh, CEO, Shoppers' Stop, Raghu Pillai, CEO RPG Enterprises, KN Iyer, CEO of Crossroads, and Vikram Bakshi McDonald's JV partner in India.

Pantaloon's Kishore Biyani has become India's largest retailer, but still has several aces up his John Miller shirtsleeves.

In India's chaotic markets, Kishore Biyani is the unchallenged king of retail. He has the knack of catching rivals off-guard and striking where it hurts most.

Pantaloon Man

Unlike most people, Kishore Biyani makes no bones about his simplicity. He's the man you're most likely to ignore at the Pantaloon or Big Bazaar store, as he stands in a corner observing the way you shop. But make no mistake, what he may lack in sartorial style, he more than makes up through his observation powers.

You'll never catch him in a tie and jacket. He isn't a stickler for large cars, and has just graduated from driving a Honda City to a Honda Accord, though he's just as content driving around in a junior manager's Maruti.

He is a strict vegetarian, and is currently off cheese and fried foods, but will otherwise eat anything that is green.

According to him, golf is a waste of time. Instead, he's addicted to a daily half-hour walk and does yoga twice a week.

He used to be a lawn tennis regular but gave it up citing lack of time. He can't understand the fuss about gyms and hasn't visited any.

Biyani loves films and has even produced some, but was never part of that industry. His personal preference is films by Guru Dutt, Yash Chopra and Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

He believes in taking quick decisions. The deal with Bennett, Coleman & Co was done in seven days flat. He has never met V Banga of Unilever in his life, and leaves the task of relationship building to his managers.

Instead he spends time with property developers - Sanjay Chandra of Unitech is a pal - merchant bankers and investment bankers.

Biyani's victory isn't unexpected. India's own Sam Walton (the legendary promoter of Walmart) is quick to seize any advantage. Which is why the denim manufacturer who quit the trade because "it wasn't creative enough" commands over 1.3 million sq ft of retail space.

But even size hasn't made a difference to Biyani's vaulting ambitions and he's on an even faster trajectory of growth. He's booked over 4.5 million sq ft of space across the country, and will utilise 3 million sq ft by this year's end in 23 Indian cities.

He will invest over Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) to make this dream a reality. Says R S Roy, editorial director of the magazine Retail, which tracks the industry closely: "Mall developers have him in mind before they start constructing. His presence ensures footfalls and a premium for the mall."

Even Biyani concedes, "We have a store opening virtually every fortnight; I have lost count now of how many I have opened."

But don't let Biyani fool you. He keeps a close watch over his empire with the assistance of his two brothers, who are directors in the company.

He might have over 6,000 employees and 300 managers, but the buck stops only with him. Every time a store opens, managers have to rush daily reports for the first 45 days, and it isn't unusual for Biyani to be fixing any lacunae either over the phone or personally in the store.

Weekly targets are fixed and reviewed every Monday. The badshah of the bazaar jets between his stores across the country to "spend at least six or seven hours every week in the stores", he says. Even when he's in inspection mode, Biyani takes time off to cut more deals.



Check out Book on Kishore Biyani:
It Happened in India by Kishore Biyani

References:
Kishore Biyani
3i Site

Design Trends in upcoming Retail Stores

Designs on their mind.

The story of a team of five youngsters who sensed an opportunity before others and built one of the largest independent studios in the country

FOR A while it seemed like the design revolution was going to pass India. With a retail boom well and truly on, it was only natural that there would be a ripple effect in product and display design, but many retailers chose to go overseas for store design and display. Shark Design is one of those companies that had sniffed the opportunity five years ago and lapped it up. Its founders seem to have got a headstart over a host of advertising agencies that are beginning to get interested in design.

The design firm, run by five thirty-somethings, has been at the forefront of the retail store design business in the last five years.

Their work is there to see at practically every retail store — Pantaloon, Etam, Reebok, Samsung and the Worldspace lounges, to name but a few. And it’s not just the store design for these retailers, the actual point-of purchase displays and other retail knickknacks have all been designed and manufactured by Shark Design. While the company asserts its presence also in 3D modelling and animation, it would be no exaggeration to say that nearly all its revenues come from retail design and manufacturing.

How did it all come about? In 2002, three friends, Ashish Jain, Manish Jain and Avnish Jain kicked steady day-jobs in some of the biggest advertising agencies of the country to start their own business. But back then, design wasn’t uppermost on their minds. The company they set up was Eventz Entertainment, which as the name suggests, was an event management company. It was only next year that Eventz Entertainment morphed into Shark Design, and Avnish was the brains behind the design. Today, just about four years later, Shark Design is one of the largest independent design studios in the country, and one of the few that have a fully equipped manufacturing facility as well. The design firm clocked a turnover of Rs 30 crore in FY07. It had already broken even after three years of operation in FY06. Interestingly, the design house ran entirely on its own steam out of a small office in Delhi. There were no bank loans, and no borrowings from family etc.

(Clockwise from left): Ajay Naqvi, Avenish Jain, Manish Jain and Ashish Jain

Amit Ajwani, one of the five partners who joined the organisation just after it was set up, describes the defining moment for the company. He says: “It was a Samsung event that we were working on. We were asked by them to create a display unit for an event and that was the beginning.” Mr Ajwani was an old JWT hand and had studied together with one of the co-founders, in Indore. He quit JWT about three years ago, where he was servicing a bulk of the Unilever businesses to take charge of the Mumbai branch of Shark Design. Ajay Naqvi, formerly of Ogilvy & Mather — and the man with the baritone voice behind “kuch log Sumo chalate hai” — came on board around the same time.

The advertising background of the founding partners has been a great influence in shaping the agency. Says Mr Ajwani: “We spend a lot of time on shop floors trying to understand consumer behaviour and we see how we can translate these learnings into our design and manufacturing.” That surely must have impressed Kishore Biyani, the Future Group head honcho. Mr Biyani recounts spending hours on the shop floor in his book, and he’s given most of the new retail business to Shark Design even though Future Group has an in-house design firm called Idiom. A lot of emphasis has also been spent on market research and understanding what clients want. Besides the Future Group, for whom Shark handles Pantaloon, Etam and aLL stores, the other big clients include Samsung and Worldspace.

Mr Ajwani and the others are too concerned about the imminent entry of foreign design houses. Fitch Design, one of the leading retail design firms worldwide, has just made a big-bang entry into India by bagging the AV Birla Retail account and designing their ‘more.’ stores. Most of the domestic work would still go to Indian design firms since the account size would be too small for someone like Fitch.

Second, Shark’s manufacturing facilities allow them to work on design execution instead of actual design and it has already worked with Fitch on a few designs that the latter has created. The company also says it is cheaper than any of the big design houses, with Mr Ajwani reckoning that it charges barely a sixth of what a big design house like Fitch would charge.

Of course, the five don’t want to rest on their laurels. Mr Ajwani has clearly stated that the company aims to top Rs 100 crore by 2010, which means that it has to grow at 100% every year for the next three years. Unless the organised retail industry is completely thrown off the rails by all manner of protesters, it would take a brave man to bet against this sort of growth.

Article Resources:
Irshad Daftari is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Startups called "Starship Enterprise". For more information on Shark Design log on Successful Entrepreneur - Design Studios

Retail design trends for 2008.

As 2007 runs out, retail fixture manufacturers and designers have their eyes turned to 2008. What exactly will the New Year bring in terms of retail design? There are certainly bound to be surprises and wildcards (as there always are), but there are also a few emerging trends, having built momentum during recent years, that will go full steam into the upcoming year.

Green is the new “it” trend

When Wal-Mart starts doing it, you know it has to be big. Of course, I’m talking about “going green.” Reducing your negative environmental impact used to be something only the niche, nature-loving brands worked toward, but as society begins embracing the environmentally conscious state of mind, more retailers are jumping on the bandwagon to stay in tune with their target customers.

It’s more than just seeing

More and more, consumers are looking for more than just products or services when they enter a business. They are looking for an experience. With the power a great experience has on same-store sales, retailers are doing their best to create immersive environments that are a treat for more than just the eyes. Hearing, smell, taste, and touch are stepping out from sight’s shadow to create a complete sensory experience.

The Big Picture.

You have big ideas and you believe your business model is as good as it gets. But you feel something is wrong. Watch out, it may be that your teammates and employees don’t see the same big picture that you see. Learn to share your vision and values with them.

AT A POPULAR party venue just outside Delhi, about 3,000 had been asked to gather one evening four years ago. They were the employees of Daksh, a business process outsourcing firm, and they were a little perplexed. No speeches, no presentations and none of the usual gobbledygook unleashed in motivation camps. They were just being shown short clips from a range of Hollywood films: Pretty Woman, Titanic, Gone in 60 Seconds and Mighty Joe Young. What the then-CEO, Sanjeev Aggarwal, was trying to do was to communicate with his large team what he wanted from them to build the organisation.

• From Gone in 60 Seconds, he highlighted the need to set a target (steal 50 cars) and accomplish it within the allotted time (three days).

• In Pretty Woman, the clip showed Julia Roberts’ character getting ill-treated by a store keeper, but later treated with respect by the manager of a hotel. By showing this, Daksh wanted its employees to treat everyone properly, irrespective of status.

• A Titanic scene in which the music troupe keeps on playing even as the giant ship is sinking, demonstrated to the employees devotion to customer service comes first.

On that one evening, Aggarwal succeeded in communicating his vision across his company, without having to resort to motivational posters around the office. The unique experience also stayed in the minds of the employees, helping them constantly remember the lessons.

Very often, a startup puts together a team and people are attracted to it because of the excitement of being part of a startup, a bigger paycheck or even a stake. They hear what the target of the company is, but they are not sure what it stands for. While a vision is set for the company, the values need to be put into place as well.

A business leader needs to articulate the corporate vision clearly so that the organisation’s progress towards its goals can be effectively monitored and employees are empowered to take decisions on the move. “Someone once said that leadership is not about leading from the front. It’s like herding cats; you have to herd them from the back. If you are at the back then the ones in front have to know where they are heading. The paradigm where leaders assign tasks is gone. Sharing the vision helps people make decisions on the fly. They can take decisions in the appropriate direction without feeling lost about it,” says Alok Mittal, managing director of Canaan Partners.

Some like Laura Parkin, executive director of National Entrepreneurship Network, believes that a team wouldn’t even be formed without sharing the vision. “The only reason anyone would join a startup is if they see the same vision as the entrepreneur,” she says.

There are entrepreneurs who hesitate to share their vision with the rest of their startup team, worrying they may share too much and lose the idea to someone else. Some may simply be unable to articulate the long-term goals for the company. “Many entrepreneurs are poor communicators. Though they see the light, they are unable to share it,” says

Mr Aggarwal, who is now the managing director of Helion Ventures.For the tongue-tied entrepreneur, help is now available from industrial psychologists, corporate trainers and motivational speakers who can help her/him voice it. One such person is Uma Arora, the founder of Idam Learning. Quoting from her experience, she cited the case of a startup firm that had been growing slow and losing people. “After examining this company closely we realised that they all (team members) hadn’t arrived at a set of values and that their visions were purely in numeric form. They goal was to gain a certain market share, but we didn’t see any vision of what the quality of the company was. There is very often an excessive focus on numbers and not on what kind of company it should be,” she says.

“What I find among today’s entrepreneurs, and there are exceptions of course, is that when we dig deep enough, we see that their vision is simply to raise the valuation and sell it off,” she points out, continuing, “If this is the case then you have to learn to speak two languages. One for your confidantes and core team, and the other for your employees.” For the entrepreneur with the big picture dreams, the vision and values can be etched in stone. For retail chain Subhiksha, it has remained “Be the largest player in the market we operate in and give the consumer the lowest cost.”

Subhiksha is now 920 stores-strong. “Instead of sharing the vision, co-own the vision,” says R Subramanian the founder of Subhiksha. Their vision and values was set back in 1996 when the six member core team set sail.

“If you get the core team into the formulation process, then it becomes our idea and not my idea. Here the team sets the goals, the values and works backwards from there,” says Mr Aggarwal. In 2000, Daksh asked the members of the 25-member core team to make presentations on what it the values of the organisation should be. At the end of the day the funnelled it down and handed it to the human resource department to make it into posters and cards to be distributed.

Sometimes the vision and values change and entrepreneurs must be ready to face it. They can be purists and decide to stay true to their original plan. Or they could evolve with the market for higher gains. “Our initial mission statement was ‘build exceptional customer relationships by leveraging India’s high quality, cost effective intellectual capital.’ In 2000, we thought that India would be the place from where we would deploy our services. We eventually discovered we could deploy our services from Mexico and Philippines as well. So we had to modify our mission statement,” says Mr Aggarwal.

In the case of a large organisation, hitting upon the right vision could be a day-long process that involves numerous people, a clubhouse, a buffet lunch and PowerPoint presentations. For a lone entrepreneur or small team, this could happen at the coffee shop on a paper napkin. “There are a lot of personal styles involved in communicating a vision. But first of all you (the entrepreneur) have to be clear in your head. Clarity and brevity is essential. If the entrepreneur were to write down their vision, if it is longer than even a 150 words, then it is too long,” says Ms Parkin, NEN.

The vision is a mix of numerical targets, values and big picture plan. These automatically set up a monitoring system. ‘’How you do’ and ‘what you do’ is a derivative of ‘where you want to go’,” says Mr Subramanian. Ms Parkin says: “We ask people to envision what their success looks like, and then work towards that.”

Aggarwal and Subramanian had the courage to think out of the box and disseminate their vision innovatively and effectively. As a result, the companies they founded have grown beyond their peers and broke their own targets. Great companies don’t just get the big picture right, but also hang it on the wall for everyone to see.

Article Resource:

Jacob Cherian is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Startups.

Amazing Story of Koutons.

Story of Koutons.

If you go into any mall watch out for Koutons retail outlets.Why ? Let me ask you a question , which apparel brand has the highest number of exclusive retail outlets?

It is not Levis or Benneton or Arrow , it is Koutons . It has 1000 exclusive stores almost 4 times of any other apparel brand stores. An impossible target for even big spending MNCs.

This is the story of Mr. D.P. S. Kohli. In 1984 sikh riots his television manufacturing venture called Apollo Television was destroyed. Kohli was forced to work as an insurance surveyor to pay off his loans. But his spirit was not broken , he was determined to rise again and he started his jeans manufacturing business, called Charlie Creations, with his brother-in-law in 1991.

He has learnt his lessons and decided to sell from his own exclusive stores so that he has control on his brands. The Koutons story reveals how much a regional brand can grow in a short span of 15 years competing with major corporate brands. Koutons is totally consumer focussed and depends on brand loyalty for it's tremendous expansion and gowth.

TARGETING RETAILERS: Mr H.S. Sidhu (left), Executive Vice-President, Koutons Retail India, with Mr D.P.S. Kohli, Chairman, and Mr Ajay Mittal, Nominee Director, UTI Venture Funds, at a press conference held in Mumbai on Wednesday. - Paul Noronha

The entire idea of Koutons is to give the people the sense of satisfaction and feel that they are owning an international quality brand.Koutons often come up with crazy schemes( 50 % +40 % off) to introduce themselves, or to make the initial push for the consumers to try their brand.
Koutons Retail India Ltd. (KRIL currently has a network of over 1000 exclusive brand outlets of total 8.4 lakh sq ft spread across 221 cities in India.

Koutons was Nominated for "Brand of the Year - Men's Casual Wear (Large)" by the Clothing Manufacturers Association of India.