Kishore Biyani, founder and group CEO of the Future Group, spoke at the recently held conference on ‘Corporate Culture and Spirituality’ at the Art of Living. Excerpts:

On Chanakya Neethi as temporal not spiritual. Is there a dichotomy between the two …
I think that Chanakya not being spiritual can be challenged. If you look at Krishna and Chanakya I would put them under the same thought process – both were working for the same end result that is righteousness and its interpretation. So I don’t see any difference in Chanakya or Krishna, both were ruthless when they had to take decisions. Both guided people on the basis of their judgments.

There is no dichotomy in the world also. We look at everything in absolute, but I think the answer is somewhere in between. I think the Biblical thoughts are more about right and wrong, we take circular ‘pheras’ (going around sacred fire). In the Indian context we don’t lead linearly, and we have got many lives to live.

Does circumambulation makes a huge difference?
Yes, that’s the way of life. I think the Indian culture was created to understand ourselves, make ourselves happy. Happiness doesn’t come out of a model for attaining something in particular days. If you are looking at the happiness quotient, India will score better. If you are looking at the economic quotient of growth or other parameters which are numerical, we might be lagging behind.

The idea that we are all living in a mythological mind frame, does that lead to the real dichotomy with the West
Sitting here there is no dichotomy, life is very simple. How many emotions human beings have – 9; how many colors -5; how many music tones – 7; so life isn’t so complex? I think management theories make it complex.

The belief, behavior and outcome are they time bound?
Outcome is a result of the person’s behavior and it comes from his belief system. In our model to hire people we see if their belief system matches with the company’s belief system, then he/she is welcome in our organization. If you don’t fit in, then you don’t last in the organization.It’s not an individual who delivers, it’s a team effort. If something isn’t working then something is wrong with us.

For a small enterprise employee retention is a big problem, how do we solve this?
We have adopted a model from mythology in our organization. We call it the LSD model. It’s the Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga model – you give all the three to every individual in equal proportion, Lakshmi is money, Saraswati is intellectual growth and Durga is power, ego. So if you give all three, no employee will leave you.

We see that you have been attracting a lot of business, built it very fast, what is the mantra behind it?
We are not measuring success with numbers only. There are certain ideas which come in the consumption space and our whole idea today is to ask a modern Indian consumer what does he want to consume? So you look at the various items of consumption and work on that. We engage with the consumers and we know that it works faster. Ideas are there with every entrepreneur. We have a platform in terms of real estate, retail store to experiment with the consumer. So we keep experimenting and trying and during the process we make mistakes. We learn from them and again try something new.