Zenil Shah, founder of Ahmedabad-based B2B House of Brands MarcoWagon on bringing international brands to India with a digital-first strategy, posting 200% growth year-on-year since inception and launching a TJ Maxx-kind of store in India
Normally, when the next generation of a business family is ready to work, they join the family enterprise. In the case, of Ahmedabad-based 34-year-old entrepreneur Zenil Shah, it was the other way around. His family is now part of his thriving business—MarcoWagon, a digital franchising company with over 70 brands in its kitty, which he started 12 years ago at age 22.
The first brand Shah brought to India through a wholesale franchise is the Tel Aviv, Israel-based kidswear brand Fox. In 2015, he tied up with Firstcry.com to make the brand available at 100 points of sale. After that, there was no looking back for him.
Today, MarcoWagon is a house of brands with four subsidiaries involved in interlinked businesses. It operates in the Middle East, Russia, Germany, Turkey, Italy, the US, the UK, and China.
In India, it has introduced an array of international brands including Champion, Mavi, NA-KD, Trendyol, Oxxo, Alcott, Guess, Carrera Jeans, OVS, LC Waikiki, Gymshark, Saucony, I Saw It First, BCBG and many more across prominent Indian e-commerce platforms like Ajio, Myntra, Nykaa, and Flipkart.
Just as Shah brings international brands to India, he also takes Indian brands (Hidesign, Zivame, Daily Objects, Biba, W, Manyavar, INDYA, AND, Global Desi, and Masaba to name a few) to the Middle East and Russia.
This expansion has been made possible through strategic alliances with top-tier retailers and online platforms in the Middle East such as Noon, Namsi, Center Point, Stylli, and in Russia with Lamoda, Ozon and Familia group.
In an exclusive interview, the young entrepreneur, who is now eying a gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs1000 crore by the financial year 2025, speaks to IndiaRetailing about bringing international brands to India with a digital-first strategy, posting a 200% growth year-on-year since inception and launching a TJ Maxx-kind of a store in India. Edited excerpts…
Your family is in textiles. What made you choose retail?
I was a part of the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Bombay where I learnt about the fashion industry. I got a chance to learn more about the business while interning at Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, Aditya Birla Group while working with Louis Philippe and Van Heusen. I attended trade shows, went to many markets, and met partners, and agents. During that time, I got an opportunity to interact with one brand—Fox—that was keen on entering the Indian market. That’s how we started with seed funding from my family.
We follow a digital franchising model. Ten years ago, when we proposed to launch a global brand with a ‘Digital First’ strategy, it was a very new concept. We established the digital-first franchising concept in the country. Fast forward to 2023, and we have successfully launched about 60 global brands with strong fashion and lifestyle e-commerce players across India and the Middle East.
We have partnerships with Reliance Retail, Myntra, Nykaa Fashion and other big retail groups in the country.
Are these brands from a particular category or price point?
We have brands that cater to men, women and kids. We have an entry price point brand, a mid-premium price point brand and even premium brands. For example, Tom Tailor is a Germany-based sustainable premium brand. NA-KD is from Sweden which is a sustainable women’s brand.
We have Trendyol, which we launched in 2017 that clocks sales exceeding Rs100 crore.
Through all the brands, we will be touching more than 500 points of sales in India.
You are present outside India as well. Tell us about going international.
We do a lot of private label imports for big retail companies in India and China being a key procurement hub for us, we established a small five-people team in 2014, to help us source.
Then we got opportunities in Europe, so we have a team in Italy representing us there. Today, we represent more than five top Italian brands in India. It’s the same with Turkey and other countries where we have market-developing teams. Now, we have a network of about you know 8 to 10 such partners.
They are our assets in these countries, who help us get these brands to the people.
In Dubai, we set up a company in 2019 with the name of Zomoda Global LLP that handles not just procurement but also sales.
We started selling in Russia last year, and clocked exports worth Rs40 crore. By the end of November, we will be opening a showroom displaying samples of our products and inviting major retailers and distributors in the country to visit.
What exactly is your model?
We sell Indian brands in foreign countries and foreign brands in India. We enter into franchisee or distribution agreements with various brands for some years. We also get into agreements with companies that need a distributor…there are about 10 to 12 big retail companies that are hungry for fresh, international brands. So, we partner with these companies based on exclusive, non-exclusive agreements and sell to them or sell via them.
We have four companies under the parent company MarcoWagon. For instance, Moda Tech Ecommerce Private Limited., through which we venture into direct sales of international brands on different platforms. Through Yolo Global Trade Link, we operate 5 B2C brands in different segments—a sneaker brand, a kids footwear brand Hoppipolla, which sells at more than 100 points of sale and three others. The company we started in the Middle East and MarcoWagon itself. All our companies are into interlinked businesses.
Any plans of going offline yourself?
Last year, we realised that now that we have a portfolio of nearly 100 brands that we manage in India and in the Middle East, we can launch a format exclusively selling international brands at a discount—a TJ Maxx concept missing in India.
The name has been registered, the space has been booked and we are in the process of signing more brands. We will reveal details in due course.
But what I can share is that we will launch three kinds of formats under the brand name: One, is a store-in-store concept for premium sneakers of about 700 sq. ft. and we are already in talks with some leading big box retailers for the same.
Two is where we will sell apparel for men, women, and kids in 8,000 sq. ft—the TJ Maxx kind of a store. These stores will not be in premium locations, because it will be about getting good deals like 40 to 50% off on international brands and not about convenience. We are targeting an average ticket size of Rs 20,000 per purchase in these stores.
And three is where we will have a store selling women’s western wear because we have a good portfolio of brands in that segment like Trendyol and NA-KD that are already doing good business on e-commerce and large format stores.
We want to start from Ahmedabad because this is our base. But we do not want to rush into it and are looking at launching it next year.
Are you profitable?
We have been profitable from day one and have never seen a single year of loss. We started with Rs 1 crore sales in the first year. In the next year, we clocked Rs17 crore, then Rs58 crore, then we came up to Rs100 crore. We have not seen even one year of loss in our business—not even during the pandemic. During the pandemic, we started in the Middle East by forging a partnership with a company called Noon and Namshi. During the pandemic, when the Indian retail ecosystem was closed, we did sales of more than Rs 180 crore in the Middle East. We have a portfolio of almost 40 Indian brands that we sell there. These include Wildcraft, Hidesign, Biba, Safari backpacks, W, AND, Global Desi, Manthan, Zivame and HRX among others.
While each of our entities have a different way of capturing revenue, at a group level (all companies combined), we aim to achieve a Rs1000 crore GMV by 2025.
