Shamik Sharma, Chief Technology & Product Officer, Myntra, is the man who will deliver the ultimate shopping experience on its mobile app. He talked to BusinessLine about what makes the Myntra app cool, doubling the technology team and acquisitions that he is looking to make over in the next few months. Edited excerpts:

How does the Myntra mobile app provide a differentiated experience?

The app allows customers to create their own user profile that helps us understand the kind of styles and silhouettes that they have shortlisted and throw up recommendations to them about what we think would suit them best. The second feature is the ‘Social’ aspect to shopping. Since most people look for advice from at least one to five others that they trust, in making their buying decisions, we are enabling it for them.

The third feature is about putting all the fashion content on the app that exists out there in the offline world. Content that inspires customers on what to wear to what occasion, what is trending in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru etc. The fourth feature is style tips on pairing, colour combinations etc. Another cool feature on the app that we are piloting right now in Bengaluru is to send tailors to customer locations to make alternations to what they have bought at Myntra.

Are you looking to ramp up your technology team with experts in mobile?

Yes, we are looking to double our 300-strong technology team that is currently working in three areas – analytics, customer experience and supply chain. I am leaving for Silicon Valley to scout for talent in mobile, data analytics and machine learning to start with, since the Valley is home to some of the best talent in the world. And then, we are also looking to hire in futuristic areas such as image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition and augmented reality. However, these are more towards future bets that we think will pay off in 2-3 years.

Myntra has made two technology-led acquisitions, Native5 and Fitiquette. Are you planning any more?

Yes, we are talking to companies that specialise in mobile technologies and have talked to almost all mobile companies in Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune and Mumbai. We are talking to any small start-up that has enough mobile development talent. Second, we are looking to acquire analytics firms. We have not really had any real discussions on the third side, which is companies that specialise in image processing, visual search, augmented reality – however, we are interested in talking to them as well. I am in touch with incubators and attend their demo days. We want to see the incubated teams build their own products.

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