myntra Archives

More changes in Myntra top brass as CFO, CMO step down

Flipkart group has seen a number of movements including CEO Amar Nagaram put in his papers last month, three years after he was elevated to the CEO position.
Myntra’s Chief Financial Officer Ramesh Bafna and Chief Marketing Officer Harish Narayanan will soon be moving out of the company according to reports. Bafna has been associated with Myntra for the last seven years and strengthened finance and other processes to achieve scale over the years.
The development comes soon after Flipkart announced the appointment of Nandita Sinha, who will take over as the new CEO of the company effective January. Group CFO Sriram Venkatraman will be taking over as the interim CFO.

After A Year, Myntra To Re-Launch Its Desktop Site On June 1

Retracting its app only move, Flipkart owned Myntra is relaunching its website on 1st June.

“We found that while a majority of the growth is driven by mobile, the volume of users on desktop hasn’t decreased. We’ve launched a number of new categories such as home furnishing and (fine) jewellery where customers want to see products on a larger screen. Finally, according to our data, women customers, who are a key area of focus for us, in particular, want to have the option of shopping across channels,” said, Myntra chief executive Ananth Narayanan to Livemint.

Myntra had shut its website and gone app only in last May. While announcing the major shift, the company had claimed that close to 95% of Myntra’s traffic came through mobile devices and 70% of the sales happened through mobile only.

It earlier also launched its mobile site after the app only strategy pulled down Myntra’s traffic and sales.

With the slowdown in external funding, Flipkart has been realigning all its business operations and focusing on a profitable and sustainable business model. This step back is expected to bring 10-15% sales growth.

Myntra Plans To Enter US Market And Curb Its Losses

Flipkart owned Myntra after reporting a loss of Rs 740 crore is planning to foray into the US market and has set up a subsidiary of Myntra Inc.

The e-commerce player plans to achieve profitability by 2017 and thus is looking for opportunities. Myntra had reported losses of Rs 173 crore in FY14.

Chief executive officer, Ananth Narayanan also said that Myntra does not aim to be a a discount-led platform but a mass premium player and thus with the help of technology, the firm is figuring out what discount can be given to which product considering its price and demand.

Earlier the company said that it had clocked $800 million in annualized GMV in January 2016, taking it closer to the target of reaching $1 billion GMV by FY 2016-2017.

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Myntra Is Targeting $1Billion GMV In FY 2016-17; Clocks $800mn Annualized GMV In Jan’16

Myntra has clocked $800 million in annualized GMV in January 2016, taking it closer to the target of reaching $1 billion GMV byFY 2016-2017. Sales volumes for the month were propelled by growth of Myntra Fashion Brands, increased contribution of international brands including new marquee brands such as M&S, Forever 21, high growth in womenswear category and a hugely successful End of Reason sale. Also, discounts have dropped by 6% and supply chain cost reduced by 5% in the last quarter.

“January has been the biggest month ever for Myntra. I am happy to share that we have achieved an annualized GMV of $800 million. Our focus for the year will be to attain positive gross profit while maintaining scale during the year. We plan to build on the momentum in the first month to touch $1 billion GMV by FY2016-17.” Ananth Narayanan, CEO, Myntra

BUSINESS PERFORMANCE IN 2015

In 2015, three key strategies were adopted which has helped the company to clock growth of 70 % YoY. First, there was a focus on brand mix that appealed to the price conscious as well as the fashion & brand conscious. Second, the company worked towards greater efficiencies arising out of increasing scale and better management of business processes. Finally, better cost management through a series of rationalization measures have ensured better bang for the buck, be it in marketing or infrastructure.

PERFORMANCE OF BRANDS & CATEGORIES

The focus for 2015 was on building a large portfolio of domestic and international brands. “Online fashion consumers are largely brand seeking. Brands will grow and define future of fashion. We expect the branded fashion market to grow twice as fast as the overall fashion market in the next 5 years. We now plan to be profitable at scale in FY 2016-17, with consistently high growth rates,” says Prasad Kompalli, Head – eCommerce Platform, Myntra.

By the end of December 2015, there were over 2000 brands on the Myntra platform, of which 800 new brands had been on-boarded in 2015. The top brands for the year were Roadster, Puma, Nike, Vero Moda & UCB.

The year also saw a growth in Myntra Fashion Brands, led by Roadster, whichbecame the highest performing brand on the platform. Roadster aims to clock Rs.400 crore in 2015-16 &become a $100-million or Rs650-crore brand by end of 2016.The in-house brands saw an increase in contribution in overall revenue to 20% in 2015. The focus area for FY 2016 is to increase contribution of in-house brands to ~25%.

Currently, on Myntra there are more than 30 international brands on the platform, including Scotch &Soda, Harley Davidson, Ferrari, Desigual, Forever 21,The North Face, Timberland and Marks & Spencer out of which 25 were added in 2015 alone.

The overall contribution by December end was 5%, which will increase to 15% by FY 2017. The leading international brands were Forever 21, Mango, Antony Morato, Scotch & Soda and M&S.

TeeSort – Print Your Tees At The Same Place As Armani’s

There is no dearth of designer/customized t-shirt stores online. From Pringoo to FunkTees and InkFruit to Myntra everyone is trying to sell you the latest designs on the best fabrics. Joining the group lately is TeeSort, a Delhi based startup offering designer t-shirts online.

TeeSort is partially taking the InkFruit route by crowd sourcing the designs and rewarding the designers with royalty of 5% on sales. TeeSort is trying to bring in some attitude to the UI that is expected of a ‘design’ venture and is not your usual off the self e-commerce portal.

TeeSort is also selling offline at retail outlets of Planet M, Ebony and Maya Lifestyle. The startup claims to print the t-shirts at the same place where labels like Armani take shape. Nice marketing pitch but the outsourcing industry has made it possible for a lot of other brands to say the same.

The custom tees market doesn’t look in a very good shape with hardly any reasonable traffic on any site. Myntra has moved customization on a back seat and InkFruit has married to sell on Myntra.

Is premium pricing a deterrent here? We have seen most of the e-commerce recently moving around the proposition of “cheap”, would the same work for t-shirts? 24hoursloot is one site pitching the proposition of “daily deals” for t-shirts and is doing better (in terms of traffic) than rest of the lot.

What do you thin of this space? Do give TeeSort a spin and share your views.

[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]

Myntra Gets A New Logo And A New New Product Line Up – Personalised Merchandise?

Looks like rebranding is the flavor of the season with BigShoeBazaar changing to Yebhi then Flipkart changing its logo and then it was Burrp with a whole new site design. Latest to join the bandwagon is the personalised merchandise startup, Myntra.

Bangalore based Myntra has unveiled a brand new colorful logo and a new set of products. The site’s core USP of personalized merchandise has taken a back seat and the concentration is now on sports lifestyle product ranging from shoes, track pants to jackets, bags etc.

The new logo is definitely more vibrant and has a universal appeal to it as opposed to the earlier logo which featured the product offerings. The new UI carries a cleaner look and is definitely faster with CDN implemented (not sure if it was there earlier). The multi angle product view is definitely a must have for any touch and feel product.

Coming to the core question of the need to enter new product segments at the cost of losing its brand standing, is there a low ceiling to what can be attained in niche markets? Or is it more about replicating a successful model across product segments?

What’s your take on the new new look?

Is there some sort of new year resolution floating amongst VCs to fund ecommerce startups that the ecommerce guys are already aware of? BTW, Myntra closed a $14Mn round only 3 months back.

[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]

Myntra Funding – Myntra Raises $14mn in Series B Round

Myntra raised $5mn from IDG, NEA-IUV and Accel Partners in 2008 and the Bangalore based startup has raised Series B round of $14mn.

Post Series A, Myntra took the offline route and established their presence in retail malls and also launched brand stores for corporate houses.

The retail gifting plus custom tee market has seen immense growth in the last 3 years and Myntra is one of the early players in this space. But as any successful Internet venture (in India), the real monetization will come from offline medium and that’s where Myntra (and other players in this space) is focusing on.

At $14mn round, what do you think is the company valuation?

PS: We will update this article once we have the details of investors participated in this round (apart from Accel Partners).

FunkTees- e-Store For Funky Designer T-Shirts (Review)

FunkTees is Haryana based startup into the crowded designer T-shirts market. FunkTees has an in house design and manufacturing unit. The team wants to compete with the likes of Myntra and Inkfruit with better designs and quality. For FunkTees the online store is more of a test drive as the team wants to venture into offline space through exclusive outlets and network with existing offline retailers.

My first impression of the startup is a me too product. The team has a background of IT servicing and hence has ventured into this space without any differentiator. The designs fail to appeal and there is nothing beyond that in the offering. The prices are at par with the incumbent leaders in this space.

tshirt sites traffic — Traffic Comparison of T-shirts/Personalised Merchandise Sites

Of the current players Myntra has taken a clear lead in terms of traffic. Though given the high volatility, a major chunk of that still seems to be coming inorganically.

What’s your take on online T-shirt sellers? Do you buy from them? Does touch and feel still count here?

[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]

News Roundup – iXiGO Claims 300 Crore Business for Airlines, MNP by December, Etislat-RCOM Tower Deal, ..and more

Etislat-RCOM Tower Deal

Etislat (earlier acquired 45% stake in Swan Telecom for $900mn) has signed a 10 year old tower sharing deal with Reliance’s infrastructure arm, marking the deal size to Rs. 10,000 crores.

Earlier, Telenor had signed a deal with Tata-Quippo for …

News Roundup – iXiGO Claims 300 Crore Business for Airlines, MNP by December, Etislat-RCOM Tower Deal, ..and moreRead More »