It Happened in India: The Story of Pantaloons, Big Bazar, 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.
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 learnings from this failed attempt of movie-making.
Its 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 99 rupees! Go and get a copy for you and I assure you that the time and money you spent is worth the effort.
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.
Bill Clinton’s new book 
