Kishore Biyani’s Fall from Grace: From Retail King to Legal Battles

Future Retail operated multiple retail formats, including hypermarkets and supermarkets such as Big Bazaar, Fashion@Big Bazaar and Foodhall. It was also engaged in the general trading of FMCG and fashion goods through its stores. The CBI has also booked Biyani’s cousin Rakesh Biyani, former operations head of Future Retail, in the case registered under offenses of criminal conspiracy.

Rakesh Biyani, since Future Retail folded up, has gone on to set up Style Union, a fast fashion retail chain, and was last looking to raise Rs 800 crore and targeting a post-money valuation of Rs 7,500–8,000 crore ($790–840 million). In all, Style Union has some 180 stores across the country and last year posted revenues of Rs 588 crore.

“Whether you are a family office, private investor, or a bank, you will be very hesitant to fund a business,” the industry veteran and the senior management expert quoted earlier says on condition of anonymity about the impact the case will have on the businesses Biyani’s family was trying to build. “You can’t ignore it. And therefore, the fundraising itself will become a bit more difficult.”

That means a second coming of sorts for Biyani is increasingly becoming difficult. Biyani’s daughters, Ashni and Avni, are currently in the midst of scaling Food Stories, a premium gourmet concept, strikingly similar to the Foodhall retail outlets that it once operated under Future Retail. Food Stories sells everything from avocados from Peru to blackberries from New Zealand. The company claims to source products directly from farmers, producers, bakers, and chefs through a combination of physical stores and digital channels. It has stores in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru.

Earlier this year, it also raised Rs 50 crore in a round led by Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath, with participation from the Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office, an existing investor. Both Ashni and Avni Biyani are also cofounders of Think9, a brand co-creation platform. Apart from Foodstories, Think9 has direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands like Super You (protein), Good Bug (gut health), Anaar (shoes and bags), BiE (clean beauty), and more.

Biyani himself has meanwhile been busy building Foundery, which claims to be a venture builder that forges entrepreneurs into co-founders and builds companies with them from the ground up. The program for which interviews are currently ongoing is certain to face disruptions as Biyani now faces the wrath of the CBI. Selected entrepreneurs were to enter a 90-day venture-building environment at The Foundery Sanctum in Alibaug.