 FUTURE GROUP’S MSME VENDORS IN JEOPARDY ALONG WITH ONE LAKH WORKERS AS PAYMENTS NOT RECEIVED FOR LAST 3 YEARS
 RELIANCE RETAIL NOT LIFTED GOOD FOR AROUND 8 MONTHS IN SPITE OF MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN RELIANCE RETAIL, FUTURE GROUP & VENDORS: GOODS WORTH Rs. 500 CRORE INVOLVED
 NO CLEAR ASSURANCE FROM FUTURE GROUP DURING VENDOR’S AGITATION HELD ON 11TH NOVEMBER,2022 AT THEIR HEAD OFFICE

MUMBAI, 14th NOVEMBER, 2022 (GPN): 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 7th November, 2022. Mr. Biyani called us on 11th 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 14th 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.Ends