• Skip to content
  • Skip to navigation

Grant Thornton uses cookies to monitor the performance of this website and improve user experience

To find out more about cookies, what they are and how we use them, please see our privacy notice, which also provides information on how to delete cookies from your hard drive.

Global site
  • Global site
  • Algeria
  • Botswana
  • Cameroon
  • Egypt
  • Ethiopia
  • Gabon
  • Guinea
  • Kenya
  • Libya
  • Malawi
  • Mauritius
  • Morocco
  • Nigeria
  • Namibia
  • Senegal
  • South Africa
  • Togo
  • Tunisia
  • Uganda
  • Zambia
  • Zimbabwe
  • Anguilla
  • Antigua
  • Argentina
  • Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao and St. Maarten
  • Barbados
  • Bolivia
  • Brazil
  • British Virgin Islands
  • Canada LLP
  • Canada RCGT
  • Cayman Islands
  • Chile
  • Colombia
  • Costa Rica
  • Ecuador
  • El Salvador
  • Grenada
  • Guatemala
  • Honduras
  • Mexico
  • Montserrat
  • Nicaragua
  • Panama
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Puerto Rico
  • St Kitts
  • St Lucia
  • St Vincent and the Grenadines
  • Trinidad & Tobago
  • United States
  • Uruguay
  • Venezuela
  • Turks & Caicos
  • Afghanistan
  • Australia
  • Bangladesh
  • Cambodia
  • China
  • Hong Kong
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • Malaysia
  • Mongolia
  • Myanmar
  • New Zealand
  • Pakistan
  • Philippines
  • Singapore
  • Taiwan
  • Thailand
  • Vietnam
  • Albania
  • Armenia
  • Austria
  • Azerbaijan
  • Belarus
  • Belgium
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Bulgaria
  • Channel Islands
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus
  • Czech Republic
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Finland
  • France
  • Georgia
  • Germany
  • Gibraltar
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • Ireland
  • Isle of Man
  • Israel
  • Italy - Bernoni
  • Italy - Ria
  • Kazakhstan
  • Kosovo
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Latvia
  • Liechtenstein
  • Lithuania
  • Luxembourg
  • Macedonia
  • Malta
  • Moldova
  • Monaco
  • Netherlands
  • Northern Ireland
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Romania
  • Russia
  • Serbia
  • Slovak Republic
  • Slovenia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Tajikistan
  • Turkey
  • Ukraine
  • UK
  • Uzbekistan
  • Bahrain
  • Egypt
  • Jordan
  • Kuwait
  • Oman
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia
  • United Arab Emirates
  • Yemen
  • Lebanon
Grant Thorton Logo

Grant Thornton Logo Grant Thornton logo

Contact us
  • Insights
  • Industries
  • Services
  • Events
  • Budget 2021
  • Careers
  • L&D Academy
  • Media
  • Country corridors
  • Consumer, Retail & E-commerce
  • Healthcare and Life Sciences
  • Automotive and Manufacturing
  • Media, Technology and Entertainment
  • Not for profit
  • Real Estate and Construction
Healthcare and Life Sciences Home
Our publications BillionFit: Technology redesigning healthcare
Our report, BillionFit: Technology redesigning healthcare, navigates through key trends in disruptive technologies in healthcare, with a focus on India. This paper captures India’s Healthcare and Fitness scenario from a technology perspective, while providing some insight into the recent developments globally.
Automotive and Manufacturing Home
Thought Leadership Auto Bytes January 2020
This edition of Auto Bytes focuses on what will shape the future of the sector.
Media, Technology and Entertainment Home
Publication The Digital Accelerate – New regulatory framework implementation guide
The publication summarises the transition process mandated by TRAI for digital television services, and how consumers can select their subscriptions.
Real Estate and Construction Home
Report Improving transparency in secondary real estate market
Holistic pan-India assessment on various parameters in the secondary market & direct impact of a regularised secondary market on stakeholders.
  1. Grant Thornton Bharat
  2. Press releases
  3. 2014
  4. Kishore Biyani hopes to get third-time lucky with Amazon tie-up

Kishore Biyani hopes to get third-time lucky with Amazon tie-up

14 Oct 2014
  • Kishore Biyani hopes to get third-time lucky with Amazon tie-up

“There is nothing called selling online. It’s just a technology for taking orders. It’s just an ordering mechanism wherein the platform operator doesn’t even have own products/brands to sell in the market.”

This is what India’s maverick retailer and Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani told dna when asked him about e-commerce during an exclusive interaction at the launch of India Food Park facility at Tumkur in Karnataka just three weeks ago.

After coming down heavily on Indian e-commerce player Flipkart for under-cutting prices last week, Biyani startled his peers on Monday through a strategic alliance with Jeff Bezos owned global e-commerce giant Amazon’s India unit. As part of the arrangement, Future Group plans to initially sell (on an exclusive basis) its 40-odd fashion brands including private labels on Amazon.in and will subsequently cover all the other categories, the company said in a statement.

Biyani is not new to e-commerce and has tried capturing the space twice in the past and failed.

“While we did have our own e-commerce platform years ago I think it was in a different time and age and the money didn’t last long enough to make the business sustainable. Hence, the focus now is to use other similar platforms and sell our products,” Biyani had said during the interaction in Tumkur.

Thus, despite strongly opposing e-commerce approach to selling, Future Group continues its focus on private labels expecting them to be sold by other online players in the market.

And while a lot of buzz is getting created around the development, one needs to be clear in the mind that this is not a tie-up between two retailers as it is being made out to be, feels Arvind Singhal, chairman and managing director, Technopak. “His (Biyani’s) businesses involve a host of private labels some of which are currently being offered on the Amazon platform. The approach is very similar to what most brand owners are currently doing in India i.e. using one more channel to distribute their products and expand reach,” said Singhal.

Industry experts also feel that since the market for online retail in India is still very small there is no reason for brick-n-mortar retail to feel threatened.

“It is inevitable that e-commerce will grow and take a larger share of the retailing business in the years to come. Having said that one also needs to understand that e-commerce will still be insignificant versus physical retail. The primary reason for physical retailers jumping the e-commerce bandwagon is that most are currently struggling to grow for various reasons. And partnerships with e-commerce portals are being forged in their search for newer business generating avenues,” said Harish H V, partner, Grant Thornton.

The additional revenue theory gets substantiated when Biyani (during the Tumkur interaction) quoted internal numbers saying that the company has sold goods worth Rs 400-500 crore through various e-commerce sites and that the number could very well increase to Rs 1,000 crore by the end of this fiscal.

The article appeared in DNA. The article can be found here.

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Follow us on YouTube
CONNECTclose
  • Locations
  • Contact us
  • Global reach
ABOUTclose
  • About us
  • Careers
  • Press
  • Corporate Social Responsibility
LEGALclose
  • Privacy
  • Disclaimer
  • Site map

© 2021 Grant Thornton Bharat LLP – All rights reserved.

    • EN
    • Sign in
    • Contact us
    Sign in with LinkedIn Close
    Sign in with LinkedIn to save articles to your bookmarks.
    Privacy policy