The Future Group CEO, Kishore Bayani, who is well known for his dislike for online companies, continued his tirade on Indian startups saying that most start-ups miss the bigger picture and work with a ‘smaller canvas’.
“I think 90 per cent of the start-ups have no meaning at all; they are nonsense. I think the canvas of start-up needs to be bigger,” he said.
“Let us take Ola, Uber. The revenues won’t be more than 3500 crore. They are not creating any new economy. They just meet people’s need to commute from point A to point B,” he added.
He stated that most of the startups are coming up with a goal to sell themselves. That is what happening to many as big businesses are taking over major e-commerce companies, according to Biyani. “They are just building startups to sell them; there is no long-term goal. This is what needs to change,” he said.
Last month Biyani shut down Future Group’s online retail venture Big Bazaar Direct, finding the business unviable. Set up in 2013, Big Bazaar Direct is an assisted e-commerce venture of the Future Group with 1,000 franchises. It had plans to enroll as many as 50,000. “I have attempted e-commerce four times in my life. We have opened and shut Future Bazaar. We will close Big Bazaar Direct within a week,” he had said earlier.
In past Biyani had criticized the Indian Grocery Delivery startup which somewhat came true as we saw OLA shutting down its grocery delivery segment, PepperTap shut down, and Grofers stopped its operations in multiple cities stating that the cities are not yet ready for the market.
