10 Secrets of one of India’s Greatest Businessmen

Best known for setting up the Future Group, Kishore Biyani has judged the pulse of the new age customers and their evolving needs thus redefining the retailing business in India.

Business the Kishore Biyani Way explores this stellar entrepreneur’s leadership traits and unique qualities that led over seemingly insurmountable obstacles and set up his sprawling empire.

Influential leaders have the vision, farsightedness, persistence and conviction to take that one step forward and make a giant leap of a difference.

What makes Biyani’s story unique is that he understood and caught on to the aspirations of Indians at the time of slow-moving economic liberalization. He created and encouraged consumption and made people realize that the desire to buy for sheer pleasure was not bad.

Biyani does not fit into any archetypal model of leadership – he is reserved, dresses inconspicuously, is self-effacing and not in the habit of making glib presentations. However, he has a definite vision; he understands retail and consumption and he knows what people want. Most of all, he displays the all-important quality of persistence to see his ideas through.

JANAKI KRISHNAN is a financial journalist who has worked across cities and across media, covering developments in the Indian economy and in the corporate sector right since liberalisation. She is no stranger to boardroom battles, takeover attempts and regulatory probes, which is what keeps her adrenaline pumping. When not writing, she loves to travel, trek, swim, climb mountains and learn languages. Her idea of bliss is to be atop a mountain, feeling the wind in her face, a few dogs frolicking nearby, and with a book in her hand, to contemplate the mysteries of nature.