flipkart , myntra info

Flipkart ropes in industry veteran, re-jigs top management to push mobile phone sales

By tech2 News Staff 

Former MobileStore COO Ajay Veer Yadav has joined Flipkart as VP of mobiles category. There have also been some reshuffling in the top management roles. Samardeep Subandh is now the head of categories. Subandh joined Flipkart as its marketing head in December last year.

The appointment and the updated role were confirmed by the Times of India. This move comes in just months after another big change which saw Sachin Bansal moving to the role of chairman, making way for Binny Bansal to take over as CEO.

The report adds that Subandh’s key focus will also be to help drive up sales for mobiles and appliances – areas which it faces stiff competition from rival Amazon. While the company sees bursts in sale of mobile phones in its special discount days like the ‘Big Billion Day’ sale, et al, the company needs to keep up with the pace of competition. For instance, Moto smartphones were exclusive to Flipkart but Motorola chose topartner with Amazon for the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus.

Speaking in a separate interview, CEO Binny Bansal mentioned how critical it was for the brand to focus on wide product selection, low prices and fast product delivery – key areas where Amazon is eating away into the success pie. He admitted Flipkart’s brand image and service levels suffered last year as the company shifted to a marketplace model where it looked to exponentially increase the number of sellers to generate business on its platform.

Bansal stated that the company is now consolidating supply of products among a few sellers, especially in its mobile phones and large appliances categories and working on making its logistics more efficient for heightened service levels. Just last week, Flipkart’s logistics arm Ekartlaunched a courier service to deliver parcels to its customers and streamline the fragmented courier market across the country.

Myntra expects 15-20 percent of sales from website after 1 June re-launch

Fashion e-tailer Myntra Thursday said it expects 15-20 percent of its sales to come from its desktop website, which will be re-launched next month.

A year after going app-only, fashion e-tailer Myntra has now decided to re-launch its desktop website from June 1.

“The re-launch of a full-fledged site is aimed to provide convenience to a segment of customers, especially women customers, who have a marked preference for browsing and shopping on multiple platforms such as mobile, tablet & desktop,” Myntra said in a statement.

Myntra, part of e-commerce giant Flipkart, had attributed its earlier decision to go ‘mobile-only’ from May last year to the manifold growth in traffic from smartphones.

Stating that its mobile strategy had witnessed huge success, Myntra said it had seen 70 percent growth and become the most loved mobile app amongst leading Indian e-commerce firms over the last year.

“Despite the many clear positives, the company has decided to revisit its strategy and re-launch the desktop site. The biggest reason for this is the feedback from Myntra’s consumers,” it said.

An internal study also suggested that Myntra could expand its customer base by 20 percent if it allowed users the flexibility of using multiple platforms for shopping, it added.

“Myntra expects 15-20 percent of its sales to come from the website,” the statement said.

Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan said while it is still true that the mobile experience is far superior to the web, “we have recognised that some consumers still want the option to shop on the web and we’re humble enough to listen to our customers”.

According to Google Play Store, Myntra’s app has seen over 10 million downloads.

Following Myntra, many Internet-based services companies had begun contemplating going app-only with the likes of Ola announcing the same. There were indications that Myntra’s parent firm Flipkart might itself take that route.

PTI

Flipkart’s Myntra unit expects to turn profitable in fiscal 2017

Myntra, part of Indian’s biggest e-commerce company Flipkart, said it expects to turn profitable by the end of next financial year as the online fashion store looks at slashing discounts and curbing supply-chain costs.

Shopping online is becoming more popular in India due to the rising use of cheaper smartphones and India’s e-commerce sector is expected to grow to $220 billion by 2025.

However, fierce competition to win customers through deep discounting has led to mounting losses for Flipkart along with rivals Snapdeal and Amazon.

Myntra now plans to reduce discounts by 3-4 percentage points and the company expects to lower the number of products that are discounted on its website.

Myntra’s 60 percent of revenue in the next financial year would come from products sold at full price up from 54 percent, the company’s senior vice president of finance Prabhakar Sunder said.

The company also expects to cut supply chain costs by 2 percentage points during the period.

Bangalore-based Myntra, that was acquired by Flipkart in 2014, said it will cross $1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) for the financial year 2016-17 after achieving an annualised GMV of $800 million this month.

Reuters

Tags: e- commerce, Flipkart, Flipkart Myntra, Myntra

Will Myntra’s move away from desktop cause its downfall?

By Karrishma Modhy 

One of India’s leading fashion and lifestyle retail portal Myntra closed down its desktop site on May 15 and moved completely to an app-only platform. Users now looking to shop at Myntra will have no choice but to download the mobile app. The portal left a message on its website informing users that their decision is based on the quick growth of smartphones and the ‘first step towards the future of fashion shopping’.

At the moment, the Flipkart-acquired company says that 95 percent of Internet traffic comes through mobile and 70 percent sales are generated through smartphones. This could be a possible motive as to why the company has ventured completely into smartphones. But, does cutting off all desktop operations and moving into an app-only format make sense? Not many seem to be happy with this move.

Myntra’s decision has received mixed reactions. There are some who believe that app-only platform is a great move. Brand-expert Harish Bijoor said, “Initially, there will be palpable turmoil with anything between 15 to 20 percent of existing customers , but this will settle down.” He believes that the biggest advantage with the app-only strategy is being a single platform player.

He further adds, “There is focus and no redundancy costs. An even bigger pro is the fact that mobile means more impulse traffic and conversion of buys.” When asked whether this decision could affect sales or faithful customers, he said that, “In the short term, for about four months, it could, but it wouldn’t in the medium term.”

Though the mobile revolution over the past couple of years has compelled users to shop or window shop via smartphones, it seems unfair that the company wants to confine its users to a single platform. We wouldn’t disagree that the growing need for smartphones will drive online shopping in the future, but how ‘far distant future’ is still unclear. It seems like an abrupt shift rather than a gradual one as Indian audiences aren’t necessarily ready to completely abandon shopping from their PCs. For those consumers (whether small or large) comfortable with a desktop should be allowed to do so.

However, restricting users to the app could have more disadvantages. It leads to a possible invasion of privacy as most apps today want access to all your personal information such as device and app history, contacts, identity, location, phone and media files along with a lot more. Moreover, the rate of payment failures could possibly increase as the internet speed/network could sometimes hamper the payment process.

Over 60 per cent mobile users in India are facing network problems while accessing internet across locations, a recent Ericsson study revealed. Also, regular customers who prefer online shopping on PCs/laptops over mobile, could move to other e-commerce sites. Smartphones are definitely the future, but desktops are much more comfortable. Users can open multiple tabs to compare products. Not to forget, they get a better zoomed in view of the product as well, which wouldn’t be as appealing on a small screen. Mobile shopping is great on-the-go, but not everyone is always shopping while travelling.

In fact, the mobile market in India has also faced a dip. A recent Cybermedia report highlights that Indian mobile-phone sales have dropped for the first time in 20 years. Mobile sales dropped 14.5 percent in the first quarter (Q1, January-March) 2015, on a quarter-to-quarter basis, compared to Q4 (October-December) 2014 — from 62 million handsets in Q4 2014 to 53 million handsets in Q1 2015.

Myntra’s rivals Snapdeal and Amazon have no plans to shut down their websites and plan to focus solely on mobile. In conversation with Economic Times, a Snapdeal spokesperson said, “Our data shows that there are still many customers who use PCs to shop online. We do not want to force our customers to use one specific medium to shop on Snapdeal.”

Customer Experience Head at Amazon India said, “We believe that as a consumer-obsessed company, we have to enable our customers to shop anytime, anywhere, and anyway they want.”

While Myntra has gone all mobile, its parent company Flipkart, which plans to follow the same path in a year, is yet to make any formal announcement. The switch will probably depend on how successful Myntra turns out to be. Looks like, it’s an experimenting base for Flipkart, who can then strategise depending upon the success of Myntra.

Tags: Amazon India, Flipkart, flipkart app, Flipkart-rivals, Myntra, Myntra app, Myntra app-only platform, Myntra website, Online Shopping, Snapdeal

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