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Online fashion and lifestyle retailer Myntra.com may complete another acquisition over the next 6-12 months. In April, the company had bought US-based technology platform provider Fitiquette after acquiring sports apparel retailer SherSingh in November last year
Speaking to Business Line , Mukesh Bansal, founder and chief executive, Myntra.com, said, “We continue to explore inorganic growth opportunities. We are in talks with a lot of companies. If we find anything that fits our strategic requirement, we could do another acquisition in next 6-12 months.”
Currently, Myntra is doing sales of around Rs 800 crore annually, growing at 15 -20 per cent. “Our EBITDA losses have gone down to single digits. We are on course to be profitable by next year,” said Bansal.
Smaller cities
Myntra’s growth is being driven by uptake of online services in tier-2 and -3 cities. While top 10 cities used to account for 60 per cent of revenues, now it accounts for only 45 per cent. Mobile uptake is another area where the company is expecting traction. Myntra gets half a million visitors on its Web site everyday with a sales conversion rate of 3 per cent. Nearly 15 per cent of the company’s revenues are coming from mobile platform.
But compared to other markets such as the US, ecommerce in India is still lagging. Bansal said the pace in India is picking up. “Online retail in India is still a small percentage of overall retail so there are many years of aggressive growth ahead of us. In the last year, the number of online shoppers has gone up from 3 million to 12 million. We are adding 3-5 million shoppers every year,” said Bansal.
However, lack of trust and incidents such as the arrest of the CEO of Timtara.com put fear in the minds of consumers against online shopping. Companies like Myntra have implemented full refund policies and cash on delivery to address some of the concerns. “Most ecommerce companies are managed by professionals but whenever a case like Timtara happens it creates a little bit of bad buzz but one or two such incident doesn’t really affect the overall industry,” said Bansal.
> thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in
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