IIPM Dehradun

BOOK
IT HAPPENED IN INDIA
REVIEW

Submitted to:

IIPM Dehradun

By:

Moazzam

SS/batch/09-11
Facts

Book - It happened in India (Autobiography, Kishore Biyani).

Author - Kishore Biyani with Dipayan Baishya
Published by: Rupa Co
Total Pages: 268
Price: INR 150

About the Author

Kishore Biyani (KB) is the man behind Pantaloon Retail, Big Bazaar, and Central etc
and heads the Future Group (under which these stores operate). He is identified as
retail Guru of India.

About the content

First four sections (till page 108) give introduction to KB’s early days, his family
business, challenges faced, setting up of Pantaloon, struggles undergone  etc. To sum
up, KB faced similar problems what Narayan Murthy faced while starting Infosys or
Kiran Majumdar Shaw started Biocon etc. All these people had a vision far ahead of
their times and community around them were not in a position to understand and
appreciate their vision. Despite severe problems in terms of funding, co operation
etc, all these entrepreneurs pursued their dreams, worked day and night on it, and
over a period of time have built empires everyone is proud of now.

Book Review ‘it happened in India’ Page 2

By; Kishore Biyani
Summary: It Happened In India

It Happened in India: The Story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and the Great
Indian Consumer is the autobiography of Kishore Biyani, written with the help of
Dipyaman Baishya. Kishore Biyani is highly regarded as the retail king of India. He is
known as Kishoreji or KB among his employees, friends and family.

Here are few inspiring lines I am reproducing from the book with all the due credit
given to the authors.

I based everything on one philosophy ‘Rewrite Rules. Retain Values’. Chase your
dreams but don’t compromise on your belief system.

Entrepreneurship is about thinking big, believing in your own ability and going ahead
with huge risks even if you are aware that some of the ventures may not be
successful. It’s also about making decisions, leadership, and about making your
colleagues believe in you dream.

When one is young and tries to rewrite rules, he is called ‘mad.’ But when he is finally
successful, because he dared to risk it, he is called a ‘maverick.’

By the time one manages to get out of the control of one’s family, one loses his zeal
and becomes complacent with what has already been created.

Book Review ‘it happened in India’ Page 3

By; Kishore Biyani
Book Review: It Happened in India
This book is a result of one of the most recent and big business success story in India,
and may be the biggest in the upcoming retail segment. The book has been written in
an autobiographical format by Kishore Biyani, the person behind Pantaloon and the
Furture group. Written in first person, it is interspersed by what others have to say
about Kishore.
Broadly it talks about the journey of Kishore from a middle class business family
living in South Bombay to where he is today and the various experiments that he did
during this journey to reach where he is today. He briefly talks about his family and
the business attitude it had and how he did not agree with it, as it had a preserving
attitude rather than a growth attitude. He extensively talks about his experiments
with readymade trousers for men, his setting up the chain of Pantaloons store across
the country and finally his flagship Big Bazaar, followed by other famous formats like
Central, E-Zone and Food Bazaar. It talks about his non-conventional ways of doing
business, taking fast decisions and not running after the usual MBAs to run the
business using defined models. He talks about the success milestones like making
huge sales on 26th January, which they call ‘Sabse Sasta Din’.

The best thing about Biyani is that he thinks about the consumers, and thinks Indian.
His success highlights the fact that it’s not necessary to have fancy MBA degrees,
what’s required is creative thinking and good understanding.

When I first picked up this book I did it with very little enthusiasm. I thought this
would once again be one of those typical management books where you would find
out of advice on how to run a business. However after a few pages of reading I could
no longer give it a cursory look as I had intended too.

What first grabbed my attention was the structure of the book – which is not a linear
narrative. The chapters are presented in a fashion of first person voice intertwined
with quotes from various stake holders (business partners, employees & friends of
the author). The story is interspersed with other voices, which not only breaks the
monotony of a narrative; it actually gives the reader the advantage of multiple
visions, simultaneously. More than hundred people were interviewed for the book;
the views of some are directly printed. This adds a degree of unique authenticity to
the narrative. The reason the book was written interested me-the writer wanted to
tell the story of the success of retail in India to the potential India of tomorrow. As
Ashni Biyani, says in the Foreword, “I realize that India needs role models who will
make it believe that it can happen right here, in this country…We need the story of
ordinary people who have made extraordinary things happen during our times.”

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By; Kishore Biyani
It’s always inspiring to hear from the great men who do things their way.
Nevertheless the biographies, especially the autobiographies are rated as boring
(even though they are enriching) especially to the restless readers… But this one is
different.

This book is a winner from the word Go. A story of the victory of the indomitable
human spirit, it’s an inspiring book. Biyani stresses on the long standing Indian
principles of humility, simplicity, confidence and combines these with out-of-the-
box-thinking to start from virtually nothing to become the ‘Raja of retail’ in India. As
one reads one comes across comments which are common sensual as well as
insightful,

“Most businessmen make the mistake of creating an environment wherein only then
win. They see life only as a competitive arena and not a co-operative one.
Relationships are built on principles, and not on the basis of power and position.”

The plot of It Happened in India moves around retail strategies of an entrepreneur

and his conviction in him while most of his ideas were rubbished by the then retailers
and his family members too.

The acute understanding of the Indian situation, knowledge about Indian customers,
their culture and character is bound to be a great differentiating factor for the group-

“The rice we eat, the apparel that our women wear, the dialects we speak, change
every hundred kilometres in our country. There are also a lot of conflicting trends and
paradoxes that are evident across the country. Logic and emotion, individuality and
social feeling, poverty and affluence, life and lifestyle, value and indulgence, and the
past and the future simultaneously coexist in India. And all these paradoxes converge
to make India what it is. To the external world, this harmonious coexistence of
seeming contradictions is one of the most confusing aspects of the Indian consumer
market. But to me it signifies our country’s openness to change and its ability to add
new dimensions to its social structure without losing the old ones. This opens up new
and unique opportunities as well as brings forth challenges for marketers and
retailers. “(Page 11)

In every page there is an evidence of a deep knowledge of one’s country, kind of

knowledge that can be gained not from books but from actual observation of
palpable life.

The best aspect of KB, of course is the fact that he stresses heavily on building
relationships – even in the age of cut throat competition. He maintains good
relations with everyone, right from the peon to his dealers, from his children to
uncles. This is what he has to say on relationship with employees, “Just like a
company has to deal with its customers’ emotions, it has to deal with every

Book Review ‘it happened in India’ Page 5

By; Kishore Biyani
employee’s emotions as well. However, I have found most management theories and
tools focus only on how people can perform better, how a company can drive
efficiency through more processes, etc. I feel that field of human resources till now
has hardly dealt with how to manage human emotions and understand human
dynamics. And unless a leader understands human dynamics, he can never get the
best out of his colleagues.” (Page 160)

The book stresses on “learning”, “relearning” and “unlearning”. What is bound to

attract the Indian reader is its Indian philosophy _it is very much an Indian book with
Hindi words liberally sprinkled in. It is very simple to read. There are no pompous
words, No difficult logic.

It is immensely inspiring…our young generation imagines all CEOs to be fancy

looking…English speaking… Kishore Biyani’s book dispels this myth like none other.
All you have to do is believe in yourself. Life will have ups and downs but a go-getter
still manages to come up after each down.

Here’s what he says about retail-

“Retail is a simple business. …..At the very basic retail is about buying and selling –
something human beings have been doing since they started living in societies. All
one needs to be successful in retail, is common sense. Unfortunately, common sense
is not that ‘common.’(Page 154)

The book is a story of the conviction of Biyani about the Indian market and an
uncanny reading of the masses. His basic mantra is so simple – observation of the
Indian buyers.

“I do that every day. We are trained to do that. So, while we are at the airport we are
watching people, and then at the stores and the malls. We observe people anywhere
and everywhere.” (Page 143)

It will not be an exaggeration to say that the future group has revolutionized the
experience of the Indian buyer- experience is the key word- one doesn’t just shop
but experiences the clean surroundings, modern fittings, clean toilets and instant
food, it is this experience that the companies would be fighting for in future- How
can we give our customers a better shopping experience than all others? It took
Kishore Biyani’s vision to observe the daily needs of the Indian middle class and come
out with Big Bazaar.

The book does have its weaknesses- the advises often becomes too obvious, the
testimonies of different people who have worked with Biyani, seem to be specially
designed for the book. Nevertheless the book outshines all this. It emerges as a text,

Book Review ‘it happened in India’ Page 6

By; Kishore Biyani
which would be referred to by entrepreneurs and students of business. A brief
extract from the culminating part of the book will stand as an example-

“It cannot be a zero-sum game anymore. We need to create win-win –win scenarios-
where we can win, our business partners can win and the customer can win.
Exploiting our bargaining power to get the best terms on each individual contract can
kill innovation and long-term collaboration. Instead, the best businesses are being
built by leveraging collective strengths and insights that every partner brings on
board. ‘Innovation networks’ or collaborative research and development
programmes, and ‘co-creation’ or designing goods and services with collective inputs
and insights on consumers, are the new order of the day.”(Page 262)

Book Review ‘it happened in India’ Page 7

By; Kishore Biyani
Conclusion
The book takes the reader through Kishoreji’s journey of building a great retail
business in India from scratch. Author recounts on how he started as an ordinary
cloth seller in Mumbai and eventually how he established the giant retail business
spread over a few hundred cities in India serving millions of Indian consumers.

The unique and interesting point I liked about this book is: Kishoreji’s friends,
relatives and employees of the company share their experiences about being
associated with Kishoreji and give the reader a deep insight into Kishoreji’s personal
and as well entrepreneurial abilities.

Kishoreji takes the reader through his childhood days, college life and finally how he
had left the usual way of doing family business and started his own journey on a road
called entrepreneurship, which most of the young Indians now are aspiring to travel.

Doing something that opposes the established system of beliefs is not an easy task.
An entire chapter titled ‘Defying the Odds’ is dedicated to how he started Pantaloon
Shoppe amidst very testing and difficult times.

He talks about building emotional connect with consumers. He emphasizes on how

he brought Indianness to the business and how he studied Indian consumers with
passion. He confided that even till today he visits some of his stores and observes the
consumers to understand their needs and their thoughts.

KB emphasizes on relationships throughout the book: relationships with customers,

employees, share holders and most importantly family and friends. He also
emphasizes on building trust and the importance of mutual trust in relationships.

Kishoreji has even shared about his failed businesses. KB explained about how he
tried to enter into movie making in the bollywood but could not produce a huge
success there. In a whole chapter dedicated to his bollywood stint, he shared his
learning from this failed attempt of movie-making.

It’s an inspiring story every budding entrepreneur should read. The book has
something for everyone. If you are aspiring for a career in retail you have a lot to
read from a man who built everything from nothing. If you are a casual book reader,
even then you have a lot to appreciate and learn.

Finally, it costs only 150 rupees! Go and get a copy for you and I assure you that the
time and money you spent is worth the effort.

Submitted by: Moazzam (ss/batch/09-11)

Book Review ‘it happened in India’ Page 8

By; Kishore Biyani