18 BRAND WORLD MUMBAI | THURSDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 2018 >

ROMITAMAJUMDARMumbai, 28 November

Given the recent flurry ofdevelopments within e-commerce giant

Flipkart, the future of fashionmarketplaces Myntra andJabong is being hotly debated.Will there be just one brandstanding at the end of thereshuffle? Will Myntra andJabong be subsumed as minorlabels within the larger cover ofFlipkart Fashion or will bothfind their way into the over-flowing bin of trashed digitalbrands? Under Walmart, themajority stakeholder inFlipkart, the future of Myntraand Jabong is uncertain.

While Flipkart has its ownfashion marketplace and anexclusive band of private labelsand brand partnerships,Myntra and Jabong have addedheft to its fashion play in recentyears. The two operated asseparate entities until recently,but it has just been announcedthat their technology, revenue,marketing and creative teamswill be combined.

Myntra has been drivingFlipkart’s offline push by set-ting up retail stores in severalcities and with Jabong, hasbrought in about 12 million-oddcustomers, according to its ownestimates, into Flipkart’s fold.This is still a small subset of the100 million customers that par-ent Flipkart claims to have, buttheir influence on the fashionmarket has been significant.

However e-commerce ana-lysts do not see much of animpact, in the eventuality oftheir dissolution or deletionfrom Flipkart’s fold. This isbecause digital brands do nothave the same emotional con-nection with consumers as tra-ditional brands do, they say.

Two examples illustrate thepoint. Brand stickiness is bestembodied in the well-docu-mented Thums Up-Coke storyin the country. Even when theglobal cola giant sought to shut-ter the brand down, it could notdo so given its mass appeal. Incontrast, when Ola shut downTaxiforsure, a fellow radio-cabbrand, there was hardly awhimper. The point is thatwhile ecommerce players havespent vast amounts on market-ing their brands and customeracquisition initiatives, the rela-

tionship is largely basedon discounts and offers.

KV Sridhar, founderand chief creative offi-cer at Hyper Collectivenotes that in India noneof the e-commercebrands, save the onesright at the top, havemanaged to create aunique identity. “Whenyour sales depend onthe extent of discountyou can give, customersare not really being loy-al to you. Most of thesebrands have built theirbase on discounts ratherthan creating an emo-tional value for cus-tomers,” he said.Consequently, as long asconsumers are seekingonly discounts, they willnot be bothered by apossible dilution of thetwo brands.

Flipkart Fashion currentlyholds around 35 per cent of thetotal online fashion market inIndia. Together the three e-commerce fashion portalsaccount for almost 60 per centof online market share. Theonline fashion market in India,which currently stands ataround $4 billion (~260 bil-lion), is estimated to touch $15billion (~975 billion) in fiveyears. The fashion market inIndia is currently estimated at$70 billion, of which only 25per cent is organised.

All three players have havecrafted their identities on thebasis of fashion styles, privatelabels and brands on their por-tals while working within care-fully selected price ranges. But

experts point out, this is com-mon strategy, not unique to anyone marketplace and if the sin-gle entity that emerges at theend of the reshuffle is able toplot a similar brand-customer-price relationship, it could keepcustomers in the Flipkart net.

Among the key attributesthat online brands bring to thetable is the vast amount of cus-tomer data at their disposal.This helps them map customerbehaviour and brand prefer-ences and maximise theirreturns from their relation-ships with both. The new enti-ty would have access to thecombined data from the threemarketplaces and could poten-tially gain their favour bysharply targeting their prod-ucts and price offers.

“I think it makes total sensethat Jabong and Myntra getintegrated into Flipkart Fashionbecause finally, Flipkart's sin-gular motivation is its battlewith Amazon. And consolida-tion seems to be an essentialstrategy,” says Zubin Sarkari,founder, Glamrs, a curatedfashion content platform.

There is another angle thatFlipkart Fashion or the emerg-ing new entity would need tolook at say experts, and thatis organising the brand

around the rapidly grow-ing army of private labelsthat have gathered underthe Myntra-Jabongumbrella. The idea is tooffer products at pricepoints that don’t com-pete with establishedbrands but offer consis-tent quality. In otherwords, the platformidentity is synonymouswith that of the productsit sells.

Myntra and Jabonghave a customer overlapof almost 28 per cent.Myntra has alwaysfocused on the mass pre-mium fashion segmentwhere it has emerged asthe leader, while Jabongfocuses on luxurybrands, global labels andthe premium fashionsegment. According to amarket report thatMyntra released inMarch this year, e-com-merce is a key channelfor fashion and theonline fashion market is

projected to grow 3.5X from$4 billion to reach $14 billionby 2020.

There are fears that Flipkartmay lose out on the potentialsurge if it loses its grip on thebrands that have helped buildthe market. The threat ofAmazon Fashion eating intoits share also looms large. Butthese fears may be overrated.“The Indian consumer is notinordinately loyal to Myntra orJabong, or any other e-com-merce player for that matter.So brand erosion is not a wor-ry,” says Sarkari. He advocatesconsolidation, which wouldwiden the overall footprint,enhancing the product/brandmix, and offer consumerseverything they could possi-bly want, he added.

Fashioning Flipkart’snewfashion playAs Flipkart rethinks the future of its marketplace brands Jabong and Myntra,the e-commerce giant runs the risk of losing a loyal customer base

| Myntra was launched in 2007 as agift personalisation platform,moved to a fashion marketplacemodel in 2011

| Jabong launched in 2012, it splashedheavily on advertising right from theyear of its launch, while Myntra tookfour years before it released its firsttelevision campaign

| Myntra was acquired by Flipkart in2014, in 2016 Jabong was acquired byMyntra-Flipkart

BRAND TRAIL

Alia Bhatt (above)has been recently signed as brandambassador for Flipkart Fashion

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TENDER CARE Commercial Feature

NSIC celebrated Constitution Day

NSIC celebrated Constitution Day at NSIC Corporate Office, New Delhi.To commemorate the program, Sudhir Garg, CMD, NSIC read the

Preamble to the Constitution with all the NSIC employees. Also presenton this occasion were Directors on Board NSIC, P. Udayakumar, Director(P&M), NSIC and A.K.Mittal, Director (Finance), NSIC.

CSR initiatives, Guwahati-Siliguri Pipeline (EasternRegion Pipelines) of Indian Oil CorporationAs part of its ongoing CSR initiatives, Guwahati-Siliguri Pipeline

(Eastern Region Pipelines) of Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), inassociation with ALIMCO, distributed aids & assistive devices to approx.130 differently-abled beneficiaries residing in/around Barpeta District

(Assam) underthe CSR initia-tive of IOCL on27.11.2018. ThisCSR initiativewill help thePersons withD i s a b i l i t i e s(PwDs) to over-come the diffi-culties posed bytheir disability,thereby enabling

them to lead a normal & productive life and making them fully inde-pendent. Mr. Tejbir Singh Bhandar, DGM(CSR), ERPL Kolkata alongwithMr. Vikas Gianchandani, DGM(HR), GSPL Guwahati distributed AssistiveAids and Assistive Devices to the differently-abled beneficiaries ofBarpeta District (Assam), under the CSR initiative of GSPL (ERPL) in asso-ciation with ALIMCO at Barpeta, Assam on 27.11.2018. Officials fromdistrict administration were also present. Wheel Chairs, Tricycle SmartCane, Crutch Elbow etc., were distributed in the ceremony to the benefi-ciaries, mostly belonging to the poorer section of society and predomi-nantly under privileged.

222 donates blood in a camp organized byCanara Bank to celebrate 113th founder’s day

In a unique initiativetaken by Gujrat Region

of Canara Bank, 171staff members and 51customers of the bankdonated blood in blooddonation camp organ-ized on 19.11.2018,simultaneously atAhmedabad, Surat &Rajokt. Sri C N Rao, DGM

inaugurated the program at Ahmedabad to celebrate 113th FoundersDay of Canara Bank, in presence of Chief Guest Sri Arun Pandya,Municipal Secretary of AMC. Indian Red Cross Society provided the nec-essary Support. Sri C N Rao thanked the customers and staff members ofthe bank for their contribution to the good cause and Indian Red CrossSociety for facilitating the camp. The program was a grand success.

BOB celebrates Sports Day

The annual sports day was organized by the Bank of Baroda, Rajkotarea. Chief Guest of the program, Deputy General Manager and

Regional Head Mr. R.N. Ringasiya And deputy regional head are JagjitKumar. On this occasion, the women especially Rangoli and took part ina minute games.As the main attraction of the sport of cricket, tug-of-war,was Carrom and chess competition. Rajkot Royals team won the compe-tition for the title match. Participated enthusiastically throughout the dayujavanima staff of the bank.

IMC News

IMC jointly with the Netherlands Consulate General in Mumbai organ-ised a seminar on ‘Port Forum on Dockyard Redevelopment and Digital

technology in Ports’ . Present in the event Mr.Ashish Vaid,VP IMC, Mr.AjitMangrulkar DG IMC, Mr. Guido Tielman, Consul General, ConsulateGeneral of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Mr. Neeraj Bansal (IRS),Deputy Chairman, JNPT, Mr. Yashodhan Wanage and Mr. Mark Fernandes,Chairman Shipping Committee IMC.

Dr. Alka Mittal takes charge as Director (HR), ONGCDr Alka Mittal has joined as Director (HR) of Oil

and Natural Gas Corporation Limited today. Apost graduate in Economics, MBA (HRM) andDoctorate in Commerce and Business Studies, shejoined ONGC as a Graduate Trainee in 1985 andbrings with her an extremely rich experience span-ning over three decades. She is on the Board ofONGC Mangalore Petrochemicals Limited (OMPL)

as ONGC nominee Director since August 2015. Prior to joining as Director(HR), Dr Mittal held the post of Chief Skill Development (CSD) of theCompany. In her capacity as CSD she streamlined the activities andbrought in uniformity in the working of the Skill Development Centrespromoted or supported by ONGC. During this period, she has also imple-mented Apprenticeship Training scheme in ONGC engaging more than5000 apprentices across all work centres. Previously she worked as HeadCSR, at Corporate Office and took up major CSR projects across India.