now largely plays the role of a mentor.
“Assortment, mentoring young
managers and visiting suppliers are all
very dear to him and this is where he
still spends his time,” says Noronha.
He also instituted a company-
wide employee stock options plan
that has resulted in 90 percent of
staffers owning shares. At present he
doesn’t have any formal title in the
organisation or the board. [Daughter
Manjri Chandak is on the Avenue
Supermarts board and represents
the family’s interests, while Ramesh
Damani (no relation) is chairman.]
What he envisioned, however,
continues to work. The company
has grown sales at 39 percent a year
in the last five years. In the same
period, profits rose by 52 percent a
year. And this year, Damani’s model
has been validated by the strongest
external source—the stock market.
“DMart’s success is his dream
come true. We professionals brought
in the systems and processes to scale
up the business and its consequent
incremental value add. But this was
and is his baby, his vision and his
ideas and, most importantly, his
active contribution on the buying
and merchandising side. Today
the happiest person in the team
is him, for what has been built,
not just for himself but also for so
many others,” says Noronha.
kishoRe Biyani
Rank 55 | $2.75 billion
Starting around the turn of the
century with one Pantaloons store
in Kolkata, Kishore Biyani had
had a stellar decade. Big Bazaar,
with its ‘Sabse Saste Din’ concept,
captured the imagination of
India’s newly consuming class. It
was not uncommon to see lines
stretching outside stores during the
January 26 and August 15 sales.
Biyani had always said that Indians
tend to save and retail “needs to
drive consumption through constant
promotions”. He pioneered the
Wednesday Bazaar, where midweek
discounts lured shoppers as well
as loyalty-based discounts through
which frequent shoppers got deals
that were not available to others.
Biyani’s businesses received their
first big shock when demand dried
up post the Lehman crisis in 2008.
The Future Group, which had been
built on a large dose of debt, struggled
(but it never missed a single interest
payment). “Every day, you see your
stock price rising and you think you
are so smart,” Biyani had said in a
2010 interview to Forbes India.
It called for a healthy magnitude
of debt reduction, which he started
doing in 2013 when the market
battered his stock. His biggest deal,
and some say hardest too, was the
sale of Pantaloons, a business he
had nurtured, to Aditya Birla Retail.
In the interim, there was also a
threat from online retail. Biyani
bemoaned the fact that private
equity funding meant that online
players were providing unsustainable
discounts and had cautioned that
this couldn’t go on. He was right.
Around 2016, the discounting levels
reduced as Snapdeal and Flipkartfound it hard to raise money at
their erstwhile lofty valuations.
For his part, Biyani has used the
last five years to deleverage and
consolidate his businesses under
four listed entities. Future Retail,
valued at `25,000 crore, includes
the Big Bazaar hypermarket chain
as well as convenience stores like
Easyday. Other smaller parts of his
empire include Future Consumer,
which supplies private labels for
everything from soaps to toilet
cleaners to juices and tea. Future
Lifestyle Fashions houses Central
and Brand Factory apparel stores,
while Future Market Networks is a
real estate holding company. His next
task will be to consistently improve
the operational performance of each
of his companies, something that he
has pledged to do. “For now, there
is a lot of hope in the price today for
Future Retail,” says Mehta of PMS.
Unless something dramatically
changes, both Damani and
Biyani are likely to be regulars
on the Rich List, as growth and
improving businesses metrics
continue to propel their rise.exceeding expectations
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december 29, 2017 forbes india | 83