Retail in India has grown leaps and bounds over the last decade and Kishore Biyani, “The King of India Retail” is the reason for these changes. Even though most of us prefer D-mart over Big Bazaar these days, we can’t take away the fact that many supermarkets around us including Chennai’s own Saravana stores which inspired the idea for Big Bazaar now have many qualities that Big Bazaar incorporated into their stores.

Author: Kishore Biyani
Language: English
No. of Pages: 280
Format: eBook
Genre: Autobiography
Link to buy the Book: https://amzn.to/42t0GD1

As someone who has always been curious about Businesses and how they became what they are today, this book gives a deep insight into not only the birth of Future Group but primarily about Kishore Biyan (KB), the man and how his mind works, his ethics, the people first culture, Freedom to let the employees take decisions, keeping employees & Customers happy and much more. Most importantly his nature of understanding and reading Customer buying behavior is very interesting that you really want to spend a day and observe him on how he observes people.

Apart from that we also get to know about KB from his Co-workers, partners, people who work for him, some stakeholders, and many others. It is an interesting way to keep your readers hooked. We don’t often see founders bring in their co-workers to talk about them. I assumed it was going to be all praise (It sure did prove me right) but some of them called him names and glad that the Authors didn’t edit them out.

Some Key Takeaways:

• Big Bazaar democratized Super/Hyper Markets for everyone when it used to only be a place for a certain section of people.
• Indian way of doing things. Eventhough we copy things from the West it should have rooted Indian-ness to it to succeed.
• It is always the disbelievers who are your harshest critics and they keep you on your toes and we push ourselves to prove them wrong.
• Keep it simple, don’t make it complex. We are trained to think that way however keeping it simple will always be the best way to deal with things.
• Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning are key to any individual and organization’s growth. Only then we will be on top of our game.

Biggest gripe:

I just have one big gripe about KB and many Indians who call themselves Middle Class for god knows what reason. Let’s take KB as an example, In the book he mentioned that when he was born their parents started their Second Business, and when he started Pantaloons they sold a piece of land (2000 – 5000 Sq.ft) to start it. When did a Middle-class person in India own a piece of land in Mumbai and also own 2 businesses?

The word Middle class has been abused by us Indians a lot and we don’t really know the meaning of this word. Every one of us assumes that we are Middle class but fail to see we are on the top of the chain but fail to acknowledge that fact. Just because most of them around us belong to the same social class doesn’t mean we are all middle class. Someone should introduce a measurement for being called Middle class and only then this nuisance will stop. Rant Over.

Conclusion:

Overall this is a very engaging, enlightening book that gave me a lot of insights into the man behind many brands that became a household name and started ground up and built a conglomerate. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or someone who is interested to read about Businesses I highly recommend reading this book.