BS People: Raghu Pillai

Retail therapy

The Future Group’s appetite for top talent is insatiable. The latest to sign up is Raghu Pillai, who returned to the group as chief executive of value formats on Monday. Pillai has over 20 years’ experience in consumer goods and the retail sector, the last 15 with RPG Retail, the Future Group and Reliance Retail, where he was board member and chief executive.

That experience will come in handy for 53-year-old Pillai, as he steers Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar to the next level of growth. Big Bazaar is the largest hypermarket chain in the country, with 120 stores. For Pillai, who built RPG’s retail formats such as Food World, Music World, Health & Glow and Spencer’s Giant from scratch, joining Future Group is like a homecoming. He was previously managing director of home solutions retail. “It is a huge comfort factor to work with (Future Group CEO Kishore) Biyani, given his vision and passion for the business,” says Pillai.

The group has already announced plans to grow the business from Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore in the next five years. “It needs a lot of bandwidth to take bigger bets and scale up the business,” says a group chief executive.

Pillai is an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University, and has attended advanced management programmes at IIM-A and Harvard Business School. Despite his background, many in the group wonder what role Pillai will play, considering there are already half-a-dozen veterans in the value segment. Nevertheless, those who have worked with him vouch for Pillai’s leadership skills. “He is a great human being,” says one.