Indian entrepreneur Kishore Biyani believes he is a 'little impulsive' and that is his fatal flaw. Speaking to Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Indian stock brokerage firm Zerodha, in the third episode of his podcast series, Biyani said, “I am a little impulsive person. What went wrong is basically growing on debt. And not building a strong balance sheet.”
He was referring to the failure of Big Bazaar stores in India- a business built by him.
Biyani went on to say, “We thought that everybody is perfect. But everyone has a fatal flaw. When I started analysing my fatal flaw, I was able to discover a lot.” To this, Kamath added that every psychology book encourages an individual to recognise his flaws. When asked by the Bengaluru-based investor what advice Biyani would give to young entrepreneurs, he said, “Life is a series of events. You have to relish, cherish every event. Some events will be heart-pleasing. Some will not be very great. The fun is in having all kinds of events.” Big Bazaar, started under Future Retail in 2001, was a chain of retail stores known for offering products at highly discounted prices. The business model was to directly source the products from manufacturers and give the benefit of lowered margins to the customers. The company gradually grew to reach 250 stores across 125 cities in India. While Biyani tasted success with the Big Bazaar stores, the growing ecommerce penetration within the country, lack of funds, rising debt and other factors proved to be detrimental for the business. The pandemic paid a spoilsport and further pushed the company into debt. The entrepreneur later on sold his business to the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Retail for Rs 24,713 crore. Thereafter, Amazon (an erstwhile partner) challenged the sale and won an interim stay. The e-commerce giant and the Indian legacy business are currently locked in a courtroom battle at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC).
The newly launched series by Kamath is titled 'Unedited with Nikhil.' The third episode ‘WTF is E-commerce’ featured Meesho co-founder Vidit Aatrey, and B2B player Udaan’s founder Sujeet Kumar as guests. The guests discussed a host of topics including Indian retail, growing your business online and offline, the entrepreneurial and investment ecosystem in India and abroad, among other things.
So far, the episode which runs for over two hours has garnered around 70,000 views and 2,300 likes on YouTube.
The previous episodes of the series featured social media influencer Tanmay Bhat along with Umang Bedi (co-founder of VerSe) and Aprameya Radhakrishna (Founder and CEO of Koo).
Also Read: ‘Went to Tirupati temple to learn to manage crowd at Big Bazaar,' says Future Group’s Kishore Biyani
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