• In Conversation

Kishore Biyani’s daughter, Ashni Biyani, has joined the Future Group board as the Director of Future Ideas. His nephew, Vivek Biyani, is the Director of Home Solutions Retail. Here, we bring you excerpts from a CNBC-TV18 interview with Ashni, Vivek and Kishore Biyani on the next generation taking over the reigns at Future Group.

E: You joined the business formally in 2006, but you have always been in the business. At age 24, is this what you’ve been sleeping and dreaming of?
Ashni Biyani (AB): I don’t know if we have been sleeping and dreaming of it—this iswhat we have been living.

E: Was there any formal discussion between you and your dad about when you will join the business?
AB: Vivek joined the company in 2007, six months after I did. That was when we actually sat down over a table and said, “We are in this now.”

E: Vivek, did you ever consider working elsewhere? Or was that not an option for you?
Vivek Biyani (VB): There were no such restrictions. It was up to us to decide our path. I think when both of us joined the business, it was looking so promising and there was so much potential, because India was growing at a tremendous pace. The amount of influence that you could have on the business would have been great. So, I think it was a natural progression.

E: What were you hoping to do when you joined Future Group?
AB: I joined it with the vision to create. I am not the kind of person who can operate a business; I find crazy joy in creating. Just when I joined, the innovation and incubation team was being set up. That was the time when we were incubating and creating the new business ideas that you see all around today. I wanted to sense the entrepreneur in me. More than designing, it was the entrepreneur bud in me was that was working harder. That is what I
was itching to do.

E: How was the experience of actually starting up with a startup, in a sense?
VB: It was fabulous. When we started in 2007, the business was growing exponentially. We were in a honeymoon phase of sorts at that
time. The only thing we were probably told when we ‘officially’ joined the business was to keep our eyes and ears open. Both of us were given the macro perspective. We were given an induction into the company’s values and culture, more than anything else. It was those tiny steps we took back then that has helped us do more today.

E: Women in joint family businesses don’t usually come to the forefront, do they? So what was it like for you, Ashni?
AB: The family was a little taken aback; they thought I was just having fun here.

E: Did your dad think that, too?
AB: No, not at all. He has a far more long-term vision, which he’d never really articulate. But yes, inducting a woman Biyani was a first for him, too, and it was suddenly a very different experience for the group. There is a soft side that a woman brings in. For example, I would take some credit for the design approach that the group follows today.

E: He is also very clear that he doesn’t want the family to be operationally hands-on, right?
AB: We have laid businesses, but there are operational champions working along with us who we would rather work with. We strategize collectively as a team and bring in family inputs.

E: What kinds of inputs would the family give?
AB: The Future Group picture, for instance. It’s a picture about consumption, not a silo-driven picture. I think that’s where we both come in.

E: So it’s about providing a more holistic sort of view?
AB: Yes, it’s far more holistic, and it’s about understanding. For example, when I am speaking about Electronic Bazaar in a meeting, I also know what is happening at e-zone.

E: Mr. Biyani, you pretty much threw them at the deep end and decided that it was ‘sink or swim’. But what brief or mandate did you give them when they formally joined the business?
Kishore Biyani (KB): Through their entire schooling or college career, they used to spend their summer holidays learning about the whole business. I believe there are two ways of training people: either you train them from the bottom up, or you train them from the top.

E: You think the bottom-up thing is a sham?
KB: I do. It was the old system wherein you used to join at the lowest level and start making chalans, and then go on to become Managing Director or the owner of the company. I think that system belonged to an era that has by gone. Now, in an information economy, everybody knows everything. They learn to deal with human beings, they learn to deal with human dynamics, and they learn to deal with family dynamics.

E: You see family as strategic investors and call them ‘mentor capitalists’. Is that the role you have envisioned for Ashni and Vivek?
KB: Considering the way we have designed the business, the family office we will become one of mentor capitalists in the years to come. Their job would be to create.

E: Do you see a generation gap in the way that you think and in the way that they do?
KB: They see one, that’s for sure!
AB: I do not see a generational gap, really.
KB: Whenever they watch a movie, they always say, “It is not for you.” But there are times when I do watch and enjoy that movie.

E: Were you apprehensive when the first woman from the Biyani family joined the business?
KB: Nobody knows whether she will be there for a long or short period of time, or whether she is just learning the business.

E: Do you have a success plan in place?
KB: I think ‘succession plan’ is a very old term. Today, the company is run by people and we are the shareholders of the company. So their job will be to manage their ownership of the company. That doesn’t mean that they will be running the company. So there is no question of succession in any way.

E: How do you see their role evolving differently from yours?
KB: They are all trained. I think their eyes and ears are always open. That is what we say to our younger generation: keep your eyes and ears open. Everything the customer says is of value—no consultant or anybody else can tell you everything. But everyday a customer is going to tell you something.

E: How often do you actually revisit old ideas you thought wouldn’t work, only to have them become big success stories for you?
KB: Quite often. We are now reviving one of the ideas on which Future Ideas is based, wherein we innovate, conceptualize, ideate, create a prototype and then sell the prototype. I think it has come alive again after three years. For the last two days, I have been developing that concept of building up a large company—an IPR company. We have Future brands and we have another design company, so we are trying to integrate them to make the most powerful design and idea company in the world—probably one that will be listed on Nasdaq. That’s the dream we have right now.

E: What lessons would you like to leave the next generation of Biyanis with?
KB: We have a clear vision to be a part of India’s new consumption story. We should be dealing with the consumer. They know that the Future Group’s bigger objective right now is to look at how—once you acquire a customer—to make him move and spend across every product category that we deal in.

©Entrepreneur October 2009

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Ashni Biyani, Biyani, CNBC-TV 18, family, family business, Future Group, Kishore, smetv, Vivek Biyani