Mumbai: Think9, an investment firm founded by Kishore Biyani’s daughters, among others, on Thursday announced the launch of Broadway, a retail format that will house new-age brands ranging from health and wellness, beauty, personal care, lifestyle, fashion and food & beverages space.
Founded by Vivek Biyani, Kishore Biyani’s nephew, the retail chain has investors such as actor-entrepreneur Rana Daggubati, Apurva Salarpuria of Salarpuria Group, and Anarock Property Consultants.
The first store, set to come up in Delhi in August will house over 100 brands across several categories.
The venture follows Biyani’s daughters—Avni Biyani Jhunjhunwala and Ashni Biyani—launching Food Stories, a gourmet food and experiential retail format in New Delhi earlier this year. Vivek’s venture signals the family’s commitment to the retail business following liquidation of Future Retail in 2023.
In 2020, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd announced the acquisition of Future Group’s retail, wholesale business and the logistics and warehousing business for ₹24,713 crore. However, in 2022, after a prolonged battle for ownership, Reliance Industries called off the deal. In the same year, Reliance Retail took over the leases of hundreds of Future Retail stores.
The Biyani Comeback
However, the family is trying to build back its presence in India’s retail market.
The Biyani sisters are on the board of Think9 Consumer Technologies, which promotes and develops digitally native brands. Think9 works with brands across consumption categories like fashion, food and wellness, beauty, and home and decor. Broadway and Food Stories are retail formats under Think9.
Salarpuria is an investor and on the board of Think9. Daggubati and Kejriwal are investors in Broadway.
In an interview with Mint in Mumbai on Thursday Vivek Biyani declined to reveal shareholding details of the existing investors but said the company has sufficient funds to run the business for the next 12 months.
The retailer is set to open three stores in the current financial year—starting with New Delhi with subsequent store launches in Hyderabad and Mumbai in September 2024 and March 2025. Some of the brands that will be showcased at the stores include, Aqualogica, DermaCo, Minimalist, Belif, Wellbeing Nutrition, Kapiva, Oziva, The Good Bug, Comet, Suta, Mokobara, trueBrowns, Bold Care, The Label Life and more.
Spread across 25,000-35,000 sq. ft of space, each outlet will feature a staging area, a creator’s studio, sampling stations, consultation rooms, a dry salon, ‘the maker’s lab’, and gourmet experiences, in addition to the shopping space.
Biyani said the format is trying to bridge the gap between online brands and their offline presence.
“Till now a lot of these digital first brands were acquiring consumers through Meta or Google. What we are really giving them is another channel to help them acquire consumers. Part of the proposition is that once a digital brand is able to tell their story via trials and samples they can build their repeat business through their own channels or offline,” Vivek Biyani said.
The retailer will work on a participation fee with brands. “This lets brands be part of the store, build their own experience centre, work along with in-store events and use the content studio, etc,” he added.
Sector Growth
More retailers are experimenting with offline formats as new-age consumer brands emerge and consumer behaviour shifts between online and offline purchases.
An executive at a mid-sized direct-to-consumer brand said on the condition of anonymity, that while there is a need case for online-first brands to expand offline, such an experiment could work depending on the curation of brands and store locations.
“For consumers this could be an experience while visiting a mall if the brand selection is so good. Because there is definitely a need for direct-to-consumer brands to expand offline largely for consumers to discover and try them out. However, there are also other specialized stores such as Shoppers Stop that offer a larger variety of brands or even Nykaa for beauty. However, the revenue per square feet needs to add up. Given the stores will not have private labels, margins need to be worked out,” this person said.
India’s overall offline retail is expected to touch $1,605 billion by 2030 up from $860 billion in 2022.
“The way consumers are engaging with brands today has changed dramatically and physical retail hasn’t really evolved to engage with those brands in a modern format. That is the space that Broadway is trying to fill because there is a requirement,” said Salarpuria.