Future Group's Biyani begins second innings with Broadway; what is it?

His uncle, Kishore Biyani, is often referred to as the pioneer of modern retail in India. Vivek Biyani, former director, Future Group, cut his teeth in Indian retail by working with his uncle in Future Group, where he took care of the group’s digital initiatives. The younger Biyani is now all set to re-enter the retail business with the launch of Broadway, which he says is a new-age departmental store that would only retail new-age digital first brands. 

“We believe that 45% of Indians, who are born in the current century, the way they will experience and consume retail is very different from how the earlier generation was used to. We want to bring a curated set of brands which are largely born digital-first. Each of the brands have a unique proposition of why they exist. While someone is solving for skincare through the ingredient lens, someone is building a sub culture around sneakers or creating lifestyle around gut health. They are identifying an area in consumers life which they want to solve for. The idea is to give these brands a physical retail environment,” explains Biyani. Broadway would retail any traditional brand.

One of the biggest pain points of most physical retailers is inventory pile up and Biyani has surely learnt it the hard way from his earlier retail experience. The 25,000-30,000 sq.ft. Broadway stores will neither do minimum guarantee deals with brands nor would it stock their inventory. All that the brands would need to do is pay a fixed fee to Broadway to retail at its stores. “They can showcase their brands for a month, three months or a year and pay us accordingly. It is entirely their choice for how long they want to showcase their brands.”

Biyani compares Broadway with WeWork. “It’s like what WeWork did for co-working spaces, where they changed the narrative on how office spaces will get consumed in the future. We are telling brands that it is a co-retail environment for them, there will be no long-term rentals or fixed deposits, they don’t need to incur capital expenditure,” he explains. Biyani has signed up with 100 digital first brands across beauty, well-being, apparel, footwear and lifestyle categories (Wellbeing Nutrition, Suta, Mokobara, Derma Co, Aqualogica and trueBrown to name a few).

Content creation is an important pillar for most digital brands and Biyani says Broadway stores would enable content creation as well as create physical experiences. “Broadway will be a physical replica of Instagram,” says Biyani. “We will do 10-15 events/experiences a day. It could be a nutritionist talking about why sleep is important or experiencing a new beauty product at our salon inside a store. There will also be a stage integrated with F&B. We have also created a content studio where all the experiences would get converted into content which could be amplified digitally.”

Biyani says that retail chain’s digital play would largely be through a content lens and not ecommerce. “We are not looking at building a marketplace for the time being. There is a lack of physical space available for these new age brands to come and talk to consumers. We are focused on creating content and experience for digital first consumers and brands in physical environments.”

The first Broadway store would come up at the Ambience Mall in Delhi in the first week of August, followed by Hyderabad and Mumbai. Broadway is backed by actor Rana Dagubatti, investor Apurva Salarpuria and property consulting firm Anarock.

The second generation of Kishore Biyani is back in business. While Vivek is all set to launch Broadway, Avni and Ashni Biyani (daughter of Kishore) have launched, Foodstories, a premium gourmet store in Delhi.