What’s next in store for Kishore Biyani of Future Retail?

As Future Retail goes into corporate insolvency, the curtain finally comes down on one of the most storied entrepreneurial journeys in post-liberalisation India.

Many observers of the Indian retail space would argue that Kishore Biyani, 60, the poster boy of post-liberalisation retail, deserved much better. As if the struggle to pay off the gargantuan debt piled up by his firm Future Retail over the years wasn’t enough, the past two years have proved particularly unnerving for him. What seemed like a big relief for his firm when the Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Retail offered to buy his grocery and apparel business for Rs 24,713 crore in August 2020, turned into a nightmare with an ugly legal battle with e-tailer Amazon, which challenged the deal a couple of months later. With a bankruptcy court on July 20 allowing the retail firm’s corporate insolvency, it’s the end of the road for all efforts by the storied retailer to rescue his empire. The twists and turns that marked the past two years as the company got sandwiched between warring giants Reliance Retail and the Jeff Bezos-led Amazon for a big slice of the Indian retail pie are a grim reminder of the extent to which corporate rivalry can sometimes damage businesses. Forrester Research estimates India’s total retail market at $883 billion (Rs 70.4 lakh crore) in 2020. This is projected to grow to $1.4 trillion (Rs 111.6 lakh crore) by 2024. The Indian e-commerce market stood at $30 billion (Rs 2.4 lakh crore) in 2019, but is expected to grow to $200 billion (around Rs 16 lakh crore) by 2026.