Amazon to strut past Flipkart on the fashion ramp

After slugging it out with the country’s largest e-tailer, Flipkart, during the festival sales in October to capture market share in electronics, Amazon.in is all set to establish itself as the single largest destination for fashion, said a top official from the global e-commerce giant.

Fashion is the second-largest e-commerce category in India, and is set to overtake consumer electronics to become the largest online category by 2020, according to a report by Google and management consulting firm AT Kearney.

Of the 86 million products available on Amazon.in, fashion alone has over 2 million SKUs (stock keeping units) today, with 15,000 international/national fashion brands spanning apparel for men, women and children, jewellery, watches, shoes, handbags, luggage, and accessories. Of these brands, 150 international brands were launched in 2016.

“Since the launch of our fashion category in September 2013, it has grown to become one of our three-largest businesses — notching up the highest in units sales; the other two being electronics and media. We have a goal — to be the single-largest destination for fashion in India. We are rapidly approaching that goal,” Arun Sirdeshmukh, India Head, Amazon Fashion, told BusinessLine , without revealing how soon that milestone will be achieved.

“One out of three visitors to our site checks out an item in fashion. We have grown at a steady 100 per cent YoY. Apparel is now the second-highest sold product on Amazon.in.”

According to digital market intelligence company SimilarWeb, desktop and mobile traffic on Amazon.in grew from 202 million visitors in September to 282 million in October, compared with Flipkart’s 113.5 million in September to 165.5 million in October. Amazon ranks number five in India for traffic vs Flipkart’s eight; and enjoys a higher average duration per visit — 8:24 minutes vs Flipkart’s 7:48 minutes.

Rival Flipkart has consistently maintained that the combined trinity of Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong command over 70 per cent market share. Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Myntra and Jabong, had recently said that the monthly active user (MAU) base of the two has grown to 18 million as of October. Myntra is on track to become profitable in the Jan-March quarter of 2018, he had said. Amazon refused to divulge its MAU base and unique style numbers.

Asked how Amazon plans to take on the Flipkart juggernaut, Sirdeshmukh said: “We don’t comment on numbers that are unverified. I come from a fashion business background, where nobody knows anybody else’s numbers. In the US, fashion is a multi-billion-dollar business for Amazon, which will be larger than Macy’s this year. Similarly, we are the largest business partner for a lot of fashion brands in India. We don’t obsess about competition.”

According to RedSeer Consulting, the Indian e-tailing market is expected to reach $80-100 billion in 2020, growing at 50-60 per cent YoY ,with the strongest growth in online penetration expected to be recorded by the fashion category.

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