After Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon, Myntra has taken the online marketplace route.
India’s largest fashion retailer has begun its marketplace, which is another name for warehouse, in four regions. The company has launched these marketplaces in NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai and Surat, with an aim to provide small, medium and boutique brands access to Myntra’s customers, with technology and logistics support, according to company officials.
Further, the marketplace intends to establish an ecosystem for local retailers, boutiques and regional brands based across key shopping hubs with expertise in intricate skills and handwork designs thereby tapping into the locally-flavoured shopping experience.
In line with this, Myntra has partnered with 100 sellers from the four cities and in the next 12 months, it plans to increase this to 1,000 retailers, across the above mentioned cities. Talking about the marketplace, Ashutosh Lawania, co-founder of Myntra said: “The launch of our marketplace is imperative to our next phase of growth.”
Funding The fashion retailer has been growing at a fair clip in the last couple of years and in February this year, Premji Invest, along with existing and some new investors led ₹300-crore financing. Further, since its launch in 2007, Myntra has raised close to $75 million from investors, including Accel Partners and Tiger Global. This will enable Myntra to strengthen its technology, infrastructure, customer experience and fund future growth initiatives, Mukesh Bansal, CEO and co-founder of Myntra, had said then.
The company is confident of reaching $1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) by 2016. GMV is defined as total value of merchandise sold between Myntra’s suppliers and customers and is a measure used by e-commerce companies to determine their value. Myntra currently receives 50 million visits every month and showcases 50,000 products from over 600 brands.