Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail has Acquired Future group Retail Business for ₹24,713 crore

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Arbaz Sayed

Aug 29, 2020 — 3 min read

Kishore Biyani, once celebrated as a retail king has surrendered by selling his retail business of the Future Group to billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail. Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd has acquired Kishore Biyani's Future Group for ₹24,713 crores / $3.38 billion. Reliance Retail will now have access to close to 1,800 stores across Future Group's Big Bazaar, FBB, Easyday, Central, Foodhall formats, which are spread in over 420 cities in India.

"Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL), subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd will acquire the retail and wholesale business and the logistics and warehousing business from the Future Group as going concerns on a slump sale basis for lumpsum aggregate consideration of INR 24,713 crore," the company said in a statement.

“It was mainly on account of an increase in debt of the operating companies, with the total debt at the group’s listed companies increasing to Rs 12,778 crore as of September 30, 2019, from Rs 10,951 crore as of March 31, 2019,” ICRA said.

This deal will help Kishore Biyani, CEO and founder of The Future Group, to pay off the company’s debts.

This transaction takes into account the interest of all its stakeholders including lenders, shareholders, creditors, suppliers and employees giving continuity to all its businesses. said Kishore Biyani, Group CEO, Future Group

The Future Group was founded in 1987 as ‘Manz Wear Private Limited’ and its headquarters are based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The CEO of the company, Kishore Biyani has previously sold shares of the company when they had been under debt when he sold ‘Pantaloons’ which is a leading clothing retail chain to Aditya Birla Nuvo Limited nearly eight years ago.

In the consumer electronics category, Reliance Retail operates Reliance Digital, Reliance Digital Express Mini stores and Jio stores, and in fashion & lifestyle category, it operates Reliance Trends, Trends Women, Trends Man, Trends junior, Project Eve, Reliance Footprint, Reliance Jewels and AJIO.com.

Past Reliance Industry Acquisitions

Embibe
Fynd
Grab
Haptik
Reverie
Saavn
Tesseract
Den Networks, Hathway Cable and Datacom
Hamleys
Netmeds
Asteria Aerospace
NowFloats Technologies
Radisys
Balaji Telefilms and Eros International

Why Reliance Retail acquired The Future Group Retail business

Ambani plans to battle top e-commerce companies in India such as Flipkart, which was bought by Walmart around 2 years ago, and Amazon, which already holds a stake in the company. He has already disrupted the telecom sector with jio and now is pushing ahead to consumer-services.

Reliance retail growth — Reliance Retail Revenue Growth

Reliance Retail will now also have access to close to 1,800 stores across Future Group's Big Bazaar, FBB, Easyday, Central, Foodhall formats amd Big Bazaar grocery chain will help Reliance, which sells everything from groceries to electronics through 11,000-plus stores, to broaden its extensive reach across the country.

The deal will also help to strengthen the vision of the launch of JioMart, the online grocery delivery service that propels the company’s omnichannel plans. JioMart is an online grocery store that aims to provide 50,000+ grocery products, at competitive discounts and express delivery at your doorstep.

The retail market is expected to grow to $1.3 trillion by 2025, that Boston Consulting Group.

Reliance Industries is now in battle with amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc., which have spent billions of dollars in a bid to dominate the world’s only billion-people-plus market. Ambani recently also announced that Reliance Reliance Industries is now net debt free much before original schedule.