The first Broadway store will come up at Ambience Mall in Delhi this August, followed by the next in Hyderabad in September 2024
Mumbai: After Kishore Biyani’s daughters’ recent reentry into India’s retail market, Vivek Biyani, nephew of the retail stalwart, announced his solo retailing venture on Thursday.
Actor, investor, and entrepreneur Rana Daggubati and his partner Vivek Biyani announced the launch of Broadway, a unique concept offering immersive retail experiences.
Broadway, launched under venture building company Think9, will be a chain of multi-brand concept stores spread across 25,000 sq. ft. to 45,000 sq. ft. in metro cities.
In the current financial year, the company plans to launch three stores—Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.
“The first Broadway store spread across 25,000 sq. ft. is set to be unveiled at the Ambience Mall in Delhi in August this year,” Biyani told IndiaRetailing.
The second store, spread across 45,000 sq. ft. will open in Hyderabad around September 2024 while the third will open on a Mumbai high street in March 2025.
The concept
The stores will showcase over 100 Indian D2C Brands across health & wellness, beauty, personal care, lifestyle, fashion, and food & beverage. Some of the brands that will be showcased at the stores include, Aqualogica, DermaCo, Minimalist, Belif, Wellbeing Nutrition, Kapiva, Oziva, The Good Bug, Comet, Suta, Mokobara, trueBrowns, Bold Care, The Label Life and more.
Broadway will provide D2C brands with an offline platform to share their brand stories and connect with consumers in the physical world based on the ‘Content to Commerce’ model.
“Shopping spaces haven’t changed much in the past century or so, however, we as consumers have changed. Broadway a new imagination of how retail should be—it’s a theatre of brands,” said Bahubali-fame Daggubati, who is a partner in the venture along with Apurva Salarpuria of Salarpuria Group and Anuj Kejriwal of Anarock.
Broadway will co-exist with Food Stories, which will occupy over 7,000 sq. ft. within the stores, making it the anchor. Food Stories is a venture by Avni Biyani Jhunjhunwala and Ashni Biyani, daughters of retail legend Kishore Biyani and founder of Future Group.
The Biyani sisters are also on the board of Think9, which is fronting Broadway.
The model
Like co-working spaces, Broadway is designed and built like a co-retail space for brands to create deeper connections and stronger engagement with their customers.
“From the unique plug-and-play model with no lock-in costs or major capital expenses to creating various experiential properties, Broadway aims to create a seamless process for new-age digital brands to explore the offline retail experience,” Biyani explained.
To use Broadway’s space and array of services, the D2C brands will have to pay a participation fee, which will cover access to its premises, Broadway Studios time and creator programme.
“It will also act as an organic ecosystem for investors and brands to garner genuine feedback, gauge consumer interest, measure brand success and make informed data-driven decisions,” said partner Apurva Salarpuria, Director, Salarpuria Group, which has invested in about 58-60 D2C and emerging brands including Epigamia.
While all investors and partners will play an equal role in terms of ideation, the operations will be handled by a team led by Vivek Biyani, the nephew of Kishore Biyani and a former director at Future Group.
For consumers
Broadway offers consumers a social media kind of experience offline. It will have sampling stations, consultation rooms, a dry salon, and gourmet experiences in addition to the shopping space.
“Think of a social platform like Instagram in a physical world,” said Biyani adding that shopping will be incidental.
Designed by the renowned French company, Malherbe, which specializes in designing new-age spaces for luxury brands including Dior, LVMH, Givenchy, and Hennessy, the stores will offer different ways for brands to express their stories and engage with customers through activities like fashion shows, workshops, masterclasses, and stylist consultations among others. These will be conducted inside a specially created section called Broadway Studios.
Larger Broadway stores will have a ramp, F&B areas, and launch pads.
On any given day, Broadway will host anywhere between 10 to 25 live events.
“It will be a retail carnival,” said Daggubati who runs two companies and has invested in several others. These include Ghost Kitchens and VS Mani & Co.
The actor shared with IndiaRetailing that of all that Broadway offers, his favourite is the ‘Maker’s Lab’, where consumers can create their products themselves.
“In today’s creator-driven universe, it’s not just about shopping; it is about delivering the ‘aha’ experience every time. Broadway acknowledges this, and by providing immersive experiences and a platform where both brands and consumers have the power to be creators,” he added.
The actor added that there will be various moments, spaces and experiences within Broadway which will be creative and Instagrammable.
Future plans
Initially, the Broadway will expand deeper within Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. “We feel the cities can take 2 to 3 Broadways,” said Kejriwal of Anarock.
He added after the initial three cities, the brand will expand into Bengaluru, Chennai and Ahmedabad. “In three to four years, we will be in the top 10 cities and in five years we will have 2-3 stores in the top 5,” he added without revealing investment details or capex although sharing that the stores will be in high streets as well as malls, depending on the right location.
