Myntra to launch fully-automated design collection with zero human intervention

Moda Rapido, Myntra’s in-house fast fashion brand powered by Artificial Intelligence, launched eighteen months ago, will now be the only fashion brand in the country to offer a fully-automated design collection, without any human design intervention.

Beginning with a range of tee-shirts that will be available on Myntra in 15 days, the collection will offer computer generated fashions in jeans, kurtas and shoes. Once a customer selects a Moda Rapido tee-shirt, he will also be presented with an entire look that is computer generated, including the style of jeans, belt and shoes that would look best with the tee-shirt.

With Moda Rapido, Myntra became the only fashion e-tailer that produced fast fashion for customers to buy every four weeks, beating traditional fashion players who introduced new styles once every season.

“We are launching a fully automated Moda Rapido fashion collection starting with tee-shirts where designers have no role to play, in the next 15 days on Myntra. Next will follow, a line of jeans, kurtas and shoes. Earlier, the AI technology would figure out certain attributes like a placket with a contrast that is selling well, a Chinese collar that is very popular or a particular type of cuff design that works well; our team of designers would then take those attributes and design a shirt but now, we have graduated to zero human intervention” Ambarish Kenghe, SVP, Head of Product, Myntra told BusinessLine .

The computer is fed with data from the entire digital space, including fashion portals, social media and Myntra’s own customer data, which the computer scans to zero in on what customers are looking for. Using computer vision and Artificial Intelligence (machine learning) on the scanned data, the platform creates thousands of permutations and combinations and zooms in on what would sell best; creating a TechPack which has all the design dimensions and specifications for manufacturing. “The TechPacks created by our technology are being manufactured as we speak” said Kenghe.

Myntra has 14 in-house brands, including its largest selling ₹300 crore brand Roadster, DressBerry, Yellow Kite, Kook N Keech, Invictus, etc. However, Moda Rapido, which has grown to become a ₹50 crore brand in 18 months, has the fastest sell-throughs and is raking in the highest gross margins compared to any other brand on Myntra, claims Kenghe.

Asked if the world of fashion can do away with human design intervention completely, renowned Fashion Guru and Consultant, Prasad Bidapa, said “Without human intervention, there can be no disruption created in the world of fashion. While it’s okay to come up with an automated line of tees, which is simple and can’t go too wrong, how can a robot design a beautiful evening gown that reflects the social mores of the time.”

Concurs Ram Prakash H, co-founder and CTO of fashion tech start-up Stylumia Intelligence Technology Pvt Ltd, an expert in Machine Learning, AI and Computer Vision and is also an artist (painter). “It is not possible to do away with human design intervention with the current advances in AI, especially when it comes to exploration of new designs, where creative professionals are required.

Currently, a computer can generate a set of design attributes and mix and match them in different combinations with existing or past data that is fed into it.

But a computer cannot come up with artistic, creative twists to make sure that a tee-shirt design is not monotonous, or create something entirely new that would work. This is just like a Google translation — Is it a meaningful, contextual translation or is it a literal translation?”

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