Big Bazaar Direct on a closing note!

Big Bazaar Direct a product from The Future Group led e-commerce venture has decided to close down shop, after failing to create a profitable model, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Kishore Biyani said. Big Bazaar Direct, the online store, had been in news for their tie-ups with various companies like Paytm and Oxigen. But now Kishore Biyani-led Future Group has decided to close down Big Bazaar Direct.

Kishore Biyani who was the guest of honor at the JLL event in Mumbai officially confirmed the news that e-commerce version of Big Bazaar the Direct would be closed in a week’s time. Mr. Biyani quoted as saying that they really had luck with the e-commerce sector. Four times he tried to intervene into this segment all the four times he failed. Even before Flipkart they came up with Future Bazaar, which failed drastically costing them 300-350 cr. recently, the group had acquired the online furniture store -FabFurnish.com. The group will focus on understanding the online space through this store, asserted Biyani. This time the group only endeavors to check whether they can create a profit model rather than concentrating on the profits. Mr. Bayani expressed his concern over the amount spent to acquire one customer online in India and the amount paid to Google and Facebook for the same. He also stressed that these losses will not impact their future plans in the online space. He added that technology is part of life and it is important to understand it. Along with learning new methods of business, they thrive to be faithful to the existing businesses, he concluded.

Future Group closed about 40% of its food and grocery chain of Food Bazaar stores last year, which were not performing well. It still continues to undergo restructuring in neighborhood stores such as KB’s Fair Price and the home-furnishing chain, HomeTown, apart from Food Bazaar.

Non operational units have been periodically weeded out and are evident from the shutdown of 18 supermarkets of Future Retail (FRL). By December the company had 26 stores. While cutting consumption the sales growth rate has increased to 3.3% following three months from October, as the spending came down from cuts, but cost of operations gradually grew.