The Fall of Big Bazaar: How Big Bazaar, which changed the face of door-to-door shopping, went down because of a mistake by the king of retail.
There was a time when people did not go to malls for shopping but would buy clothes or products from local street shops. At that time there was not much online shopping culture and there were very few malls where only older people went shopping. In such a situation, the retail king of India understood the shopping style of the people and opened the “Big Bazaar” so that they could shop under one roof. This Big Bazaar changed the shopping trend of the people and made veteran businessman Kishore Biyani the king of retail.
It was the year 2001 when the first Big Bazaar store was opened in the country. People were so enthusiastic about Big Bazaar that the company managed to do a business of Rs 30 crore in just one day. The slogan of the first day “the best, the cheapest” made it recognizable in every household. But now the company running Big Bazaar has gone bankrupt. Due to a mistake by Kishore Biyani, the king of retail went bankrupt and the business of Big Bazaar started sinking. After all, how is it possible that such a popular brand has reached the point of becoming history? Let us understand the whole issue…
How did Kishore Biyani become the king of retail?
First of all let us tell you about the owner of this company. His name is Kishore Biyani. Till a decade ago, this name was known as the king of retail. Biyani had built an entire empire of retail business through Future Retail but the way he took Future Retail from scratch. In the same way, now the company has hit the ground running.
How did the Grand Bazaar begin?
Actually, Big Bazaar is the flagship brand of Future Retail. But it is not like it became such a big name overnight. The story of its beginning is quite old. The company was established in 1987 under the name Manz Wear Private Limited. In 1991, the name of the company was changed to Pantaloon Fashions (India) Limited. The company’s IPO happened in 1992. In 1994, an exclusive menswear store called Pantaloon Shoppe was opened across the country. The company started selling branded clothing through multi-brand retail stores in the country.
Pantaloon Retail opened three Big Bazaar stores in Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in just 22 days in 2001. The Food Bazaar supermarket chain was started in 2002. After this, in 2003, Big Bazaar entered the tier 2 cities by opening a store in Nagpur. In 2007, the company opened its 50th store in Kanpur. After that, large markets were opened in all the cities and crowds of people started gathering.
Great loss due to the breakdown of this agreement.
In the year 2019, Kishore Biyani was ranked 80th on the Forbes rich list. Before 2019, his business was expanding rapidly. Kishore Biyani’s Future Group has been facing a financial crisis for the past few years. This happened when Future Retail was unable to repay the loan taken. After this, the banks seized the pledged shares of the company. After that, in order to repay the debt, Kishore Biyani entered into a deal with Reliance Retail and Fashion Lifestyle Limited (RRFLL) for Rs 24,713 crore, in which it was decided to sell Future Retail. But due to opposition from Amazon, this deal got caught in legal hurdles. After that, Reliance also backed out of the deal and Kishore Biyani’s company went bankrupt as it was unable to repay the loan.
Actually, Kishore Biyani, born in a Marwari family, who moved from the saree business to Big Bazaar, founded Pantaloon in 1987. Due to lack of money, he sold this business to Aditya Birla Group in 2012. Pantaloon and Big Bazaar were started by Biyani from Kolkata.
Luck changed after Corona
Kishore Biyani’s career began with selling stone-washed denim in Mumbai in 1980. His dream was to make his own branded products accessible to everyone, and to some extent he succeeded. Kishore Biyani founded Pantaloon at just 26 years old.
The year 2019 was the most problematic for Kishore Biyani. After that, the crisis deepened due to Corona. Due to the continuous increase in debt, rating agencies also downgraded the rating. Due to which Future Retail shares were scattered. According to an estimate, in 2020, Future Group’s Big Bazaar, Easyday and FBB had a total of more than 1,800 stores. Which were spread across 420 cities in the country.
After breaking the deal with Reliance, this Kishore Biyani-owned company has now filed for bankruptcy and is going through the auction process. A total of 49 companies have expressed their desire to buy this company. In which Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani’s companies are also in the race. Now it remains to be seen who will win the Big Bazaar by making a big bid.
