How ABFRL increased its overall revenue by three times through a single app
New Delhi: With a revenue of Rs. 12,418 crore and a retail footprint spanning 10.8 million sq. ft. (as of March 31, 2023), Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited (ABFRL) is touted as India’s first billion-dollar pure-play fashion powerhouse from the Aditya Birla Group.
ABFRL emerged after the group consolidated its branded apparel businesses comprising the Madura Fashion division, Pantaloons Fashion and Retail (PFRL) and Madura Fashion & Lifestyle (MFL) in May 2015. Post the consolidation, PFRL was renamed Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd.
The company owns multiple brands like Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England. As well as an extensive portfolio of international brands comprising The Collective, Amongst, Ralph Lauren, Hackett London, Simon Carter, Ted Baker, Fred Perry, Forever 21, American Eagle, Reebok and Galeries Lafayette.
As of 30 June 2023, the company had 4,008 stores across 33,874 multi-brand outlets with 6,837 points of sales in department stores across India, as per a Business Standard report.
A few months back, the company embarked on a journey to launch a super app which enabled its customers to buy products from across its brands.
The need
Holding a diverse portfolio, the company realised that shoppers had to visit multiple touchpoints to buy its brands. To simplify shopper journeys for all its products, it decided to launch a super app, which offered all products from its multiple brands in one place.
The other reason for embarking on this tech initiative was that the company faced a lot of problems related to manual data integration, slowness and product support-related issues. The cost of running the old ERP (enterprise resource planning) was too high and solutions from OEM (original equipment manufacturing) were not there.
The approach
The company decided to have an individual brand identity with a multi-brand website/ mobile app. The new super app facilitates the user to purchase across multiple brands with a single transaction. It helps users avoid the hassle of installing numerous apps, instead, they can access multiple products on a single app.
The app is also beneficial for the company as it optimises marketing costs and increases traffic through organic and cross-brand channels.
A hyperlocal functionality enables faster delivery while reducing supply chain costs and carbon footprint.
Users can access the app with a single login.
The super app has elements like a home page, category pages, microsites, listing page, product description page, brand-specific search and a unified cart-to-checkout experience.
The home page content can be personalized on the app showing banner ads and categories, based on a person’s gender, age group, geo-location, and shopping/browsing patterns. It helps customers continue their shopping journey where they last left.
There are also other benefits like category pages similar to the home page, and personalization on size, price, style and fit.
The app has an advanced search function enabling customers to search for trending products and recent searches. It also comes with a recommendation engine. The app also has a global shopping cart housing different brands enabling customers to make cross-brand purchases with a single transaction.
Customers can also redeem their brand coupons, credits, loyalty redemption and eGV (Electronic Gift Vouchers) on the app itself. The brand has a goal of providing a store like experience to its customers, with multiple options to choose from.
Other features include Dynamic content updates, improvised go-to-market strategy, personalised marketing campaigns based on customer behaviour, cart/wishlist actions, trend and gender.
Furthermore, the app has a scalable architecture to enable adding more brands.
Business Impact
The app not only increased convenience to customers but also provided a source of valuable insight into their behaviour, giving a deeper understanding of customer’s browsing and purchase patterns.
The company started experiencing the results within six months of launching the app and expects a return on money invested in 12 months.
Since customers can now purchase brands in a single place, the company has reported 25% additional revenue generated from cross-brand sales with organic traffic and a 28% increase in basket size.
The company reported a seven times increase in traffic. Apart from that, there was a 48% increase in the conversion rate, 7% of the traffic opted for hyper Local mode, where the conversion rate is 9%. Since the launch of the super app company’s overall revenue has increased by 3 times.
