Kishore Biyani, MD, Pantaloon Retail (India), receives the 'retail face of the year'. Mohini Bhatnagar reports

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.

Today, Biyani has three successful retail brands spread over 1.1 million sq ft of real space. The brands include the 10-outlet Big Bazaar hypermarket; the 13-outlet Food Bazaar that straddles the food and grocery business and the 13 Pantaloon apparel stores. His fourth retail format mall called Central was launched in Bangalore in May this year.

By the end of 2005 he expects to have 30 Food Bazaar outlets, 22 outlets under Big Bazaar, 21 Pantaloon outlets and four under the Central logo occupying three million sq ft.

Kishore Biyani was on the periphery of the Indian retail scene a few years ago. His brand Pantaloons did not have the flamboyance, glitter and panache of Raheja's Shopper's Stop, RPG Enterprises' retail brands like Food World or Health and Glow outlets or the global backing of McDonald's India.

Yet, today Biyani is far ahead of any other Indian retailer in India in terms of revenues and profits. In June this year Pantaloon Retail announced total revenues of Rs650 crore, against Rs550 crore declared by RPG Enterprises and Rs400 crore by Shopper's Stop. In the last two years, institutional investors like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup Global Markets have picked up stakes in his firm. The Pantaloon stock is rated as being among the strong performers on the BSE, quoting at Rs350 up from Rs51.25 in 2003.

There is no secret behind Biyani's success. Rajesh Gupta, who has lived abroad for years and does his monthly shopping at Food Bazaar (despite other malls being more prominent in the South) says, "Food Bazaar and Big Bazaar are the closest to global brands like Carrefour and Walmart in India in terms of value for money." He adds, "The so called hypermarkets in India are nothing but a giant hoax."

Biyani, the son of a Mumbai-based textile merchant, graduated in commerce from HR College, Mumbai in 1981 and initially joined his father's business. Biyani recalls that his father belonged to the old school and was a conventional businessman. Being a cloth trader he could never associate fabrics with fashion.

Soon Biyani began to tire of the business and chose to start a yarn-manufacturing unit, which in those days offered high margins. Of the Rs7 lakh needed, he put only Rs2 lakh, saved from his trading deals, in his father's business, and borrowed the rest from his family.

Pantaloon started in 1987 as Manz Wear Pvt Ltd. Biyani took the company public in 1991, changing its name to Pantaloon Fashions (India) the following year, and then again in 1999 to Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd. Today, the company has approximately 14,000 shareholders.

Biyani's company initially made trousers, which were sold to shops that stocked multi-brand clothes. The response was decent though not overwhelming. The same year he set up a plant at the family's premises in Mumbai installing machinery worth Rs20 lakh borrowed from banks.

The next step was to begin advertising. In the first year, Pantaloon Fashions' advertising budget was Rs17 lakh on a turnover of Rs70 lakh leaving Biyani with a profit of Rs8 lakh. The next step was to position Pantaloon in the office and casuals segment with an all-India network.

At a crucial juncture when Pantaloon Retail needed funds to expand and set up its own retail shops to stock everything under one roof, the Ahmedabad-based Arvind Mills, flagship of the Lalbhai group, asked him to market its denim brand. This helped bring in much-needed funds. In 1988-89, the launch of Pantaloon's own brand, Bare Necessities, helped establish Pantaloon in the fashion industry.

Pantaloon Retail has now entered the entertainment market with the Hrithik Roshan-Esha Deol movie, Na tum jaano na hum, provides expertise in managing malls, has tie-ups with multiplexes like Rave III and Inox and is in the process of tying up with the Delhi-based PVR group.

As Biyani consolidates, he is candid enough to admit that money is important as it provides leverage in exercising a choice and that without money the world would be a terrible place to live in.