India’s richest man targets style e-commerce with low-cost mannequin

Reliance Industries, run by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, is gearing as much as deploy a profitable technique from its previous playbook for the style market: low-cost merchandise.

Ajio, Reliance’s retail style arm, has quietly launched Ajio Avenue. The platform boasts an enormous collection of clothes and niknaks, ranging from a worth level as little as 199 Indian rupees ($2.4). Based on Ajio’s web site, Avenue ensures the “lowest worth” for its choices, waives supply costs, and guarantees an easy returns course of.

The roll-out of Ajio Street, which has not been beforehand reported, coincides with a affirmation from Shein, a dominant participant within the international funds style market hailing from China, that it has partnered with Reliance to reestablish a presence within the profitable Indian market.

The emphasis on affordability is vital in capturing market share in India’s style sector, analysts say, citing the area’s notoriously price-sensitive shoppers.

Ajio Avenue web site. (Display seize)

The Indian newspaper Financial Occasions reported final month that Reliance plans to focus on shoppers in smaller Indian cities and cities with Ajio Avenue. The newspaper additionally stated that Avenue will function on a zero-commission mannequin, that means sellers is not going to be paying any fee to the platform in a transfer to achieve fast inroads.

Reliance’s plan additionally places Ajio Avenue in direct competitors with SoftBank and Prosus-backed Meesho, which specialises in promoting low-cost longtail style and accent objects.

Ajio, launched in 2016, presently instructions over 15% of the style e-commerce market in India, in accordance with wealth administration and analysis agency Bernstein. Flipkart, which owns style big Myntra, dominates the class with over 60% market share, whereas Amazon is holding on to about 20% of the slice.

For Reliance, deploying an affordability-led strategy to realize market dominance has been a longstanding technique. This was strikingly evident within the earlier decade when the corporate dramatically shook the Indian wi-fi sector with the introduction of Jio – providing free voice calls and cutrate information charges. With a subscriber base now exceeding 430 million, Jio now dominates the telecommunications trade within the South Asian market.