Future Group Vendors United (FGVU) is an association of more
than 300 MSME vendors supplying garment and fashion accessories to all Future Group companies
namely Future Enterprises Ltd / Future Retail Ltd / Future Lifestyle Fashions Ltd / Future Speciality
Retail Ltd.
Mr. Piyush Shah, Co-Founder & Member of Future Group Vendors United stated that the future of
vendors and around one lakh workers was in jeopardy. & dire state as no payments received from
Future Group for more than 3 years and ready goods of around Rs. 500 Crore lying to be lifted. The
vendors of FGVU had a gathering of more than 100 vendors at Future Group's head office in
jogeshwari to meet Mr.Kishore Biyani on 7 th November, 2022. Mr. Biyani called us on 11 th
November, when we met under strict police bandobast. He heard us but no clear reply or the
solution was given by him.
In view of above situation, the vendors have decided to gather outside Reliance Retail head office at
Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai on 14 th November, 2022 at 11 AM for making desperate plea to lift the
ready inventory. Vendors from across the country, viz. Tirupur, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan etc. have
been camping in Mumbai, will join the gathering.
We had two points agenda, while meeting Mr. Kishore Biyani, though nothing came out from the
meeting.
1) Recovery of our outstanding in all Future Group companies pending since over 3 years.
2) The goods which we had made under the tripartite arrangement between Future Enterprises Ltd
/ Reliance Retail Ltd / Vendors lying with us since last 8 months.
Post pandemic when Future group was in a bad shape financially and when we all vendors had
stopped supplying goods to Future Group companies as old outstanding was already pending and
had no clarity regarding the payments, then Reliance Retail Ltd came in support of Future Group.
A mutual arrangement was arrived at where we vendors used to bill goods to Future Enterprises Ltd
and ship to Reliance Retail Ltd and payments for the same were done by Reliance Retail Ltd directly
to the vendors.
Since the vendors were also exhausted financially, so this mutual arrangement was structured in this
manner where Reliance used to pay 25% of PO value in advance and balance within 10 days of
GRN(Goods Received Note) at Reliance Retail Ltd warehouse.
This continued for 6 months after which the payment terms were revised to 45 days post GRN and
this arrangement was supposed to last till 31-03-2022 and we received payments duly till February
2022
Then suddenly came a time when since January 2022, when Reliance Retail stopped lifting the goods
for which orders were already placed to us by the sourcing team of Future Group along with the PO
copies . Thus, the vendors and around one lakh workers’ future were jeopardised, leaving them in
mid-sea on their own with a backlog of inventory and payment and nowhere to go.
There was no information about anything until 27th April 2022 when we came to know that their
deal was called off (Reliance – Future deal).
After a lot of request, part quantity of our goods were lifted by reliance retail Ltd in the month of
July / August 2022 but a major part of our goods are still lying with us which has a value of more
than 500 crore.
Most of the future group stores were acquired and their front end and back end staff were absorbed
by Reliance Retail and they continue to pay the rents and salaries to them respectively
We fail to understand how reliance is paying rent and electricity of closed stores of Future Group
and paying salaries to employees without any work for last more than 6 months, value of which far
exceeds the amount of goods which is merely worth Rs. 500 cr.
Being Future Group vendors, we had no way to contact Reliance Retail and we do not even have a
clear reply from Future Group inspite of chasing them for last 8 months .
We have approached all the institutions, associations, MSME and other government bodies to
support the industry or else thousands of vendors who are MSMEs and who employ more than 1
lakh workers will be out of business and won't survive this delay in payments and ready goods
deliveries. The whole industry will see the drastic effects of unimagined magnitude & crisis for a long
time if the issue of these Msme’s is not resolved.
Some desperate measures need to be taken not only in the interest of these MSME vendors & huge
number of workers but also to safeguard the general interest of garment industry in the country.
For further information, please contact Mr. Piyush Shah, Co-Founder of “Future Group Vendors
United” Association on +91 93244 65500.
