Influence of Sarvana Stores Located in Theyagraya Nagar, Chennai
Many people think that Big Bazaar was inspired by Wall-Mart but the truth is that Kishore Biyani and his team members are neither inspired by US ways of doing retailing nor they have been to US much. The credit for foundation and inspiration goes to Saravana Store, a family-run 25-years-old store, whose philosophy was - low margin, high turnover. In that store, food, groceries, clothes, everything had a separate section. It had around 120 people just to manage crowd. The single shop was doing business of more than INR 200 Crore per year. This shop was the template for Big Bazaar.

Observing Customers Regularly
Regular customer feedback is also an influential factor for the success of Big Bazaar. The Big Bazaar has a separate team that looks for customer’s purchasing pattern and how they like or dislike products, how they approach particular products. For example, unlike other stores where the most expensive and catchy item is placed at the front display, Big Bazaar places the "Value for Money" items at check-out points.

Imbibed Entrepreneurial Spirit in Organization
Decision making power is given to every level of employees at Big Bazaar. Kishore Biyani has given risk-taking power, which led to exposure of entrepreneurial spirit in every employee. Everybody in Big Bazaar operates with speed and confidence when it comes to decision making.

Building on Core Values
Core values of Indian-ness, valuing and nurturing relationships, and simplicity shaped the brand. Kishore Biyani always believes in long-term relationships, with customers, suppliers and employees. Once thinking about offering gifts to employees close to Diwali, Kishore Biyani suggested giving them wall-paints to keep their house clean. The paint is used in Indian culture to keep house clean and brings freshness. The motive behind this was to keep everything clean and bring freshness in organization.

Strategic Decisions Taken to Build the Big Bazaar Brand

The strategic decisions that lead to building of Big Bazaar were: -

Real Estate Game

For a retailer, location is one of the most important things. According to Kishore Biyani, real estate cost should be less than 5% of total sales of store in order to provide maximum benefits to customer.

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* Contributed by: -
Ravi Bhatia is a second year student of PGDM at IIM Calcutta. He is an Engineer with honors degree from IIIT Allahabad. He has worked for India's number one private life insurance provider and leading communication software provider, and has authored several articles and press-releases.
Article posted on January 25, 2009.