CMAI’s (Clothing Manufactures Association in India) Ivy League held its eighth meeting on August 6, 2014 in Mumbai to discuss the agenda how to grow the business with the leaders of Indian e-commerce. The key speaker, Ankit Agarwal, sr. manager business development, Flipkart shared his views on how e-commerce has occupied a leading position in the retail market.
Agarwal said that around 15-20 years back large format retail started in India. Many of the brands welcomed the entry and some opposed saying that it will eat their market share. But nothing as such happened rather the entry of large format stores has taken the retail business to the next level.
He emphasized that the same is with ecommerce which is now been looked upon as the future of retail business. E-commerce is easy and convenient business to start with. The brands can reach the next level of growth with ecommerce by extending its presence to towns and cities which they would take time to develop through physical retail expansion.
Ankit said, “E-commerce is the new technology which is very convenient for the customers and is now becoming a necessity. The share of ecommerce will keep on increasing with an increase in internet penetration. In 2016 the business through e-commerce is estimating to reach somewhere between 9 billion dollars. In 2012 the market for fashion on e-commerce was somewhere around 1700 crores. Now this market is estimated to reach somewhere at around 17000 Crores in India.”
He further added, “The growth of online can be compared with the physical business which comes through brand stores, MBOs and LFS is not more that 25,000 crores in the organized market setup.”
Ankit told the audience that Flipkart is occupying a leading market position with around 35 lakh customers who visit Flipkart on a daily basis and out of this there are 1 lakh customers who end up shopping with them. Today their customer base is around 22 million.
The meeting involved interaction amongst Ivy League members and Flipkart expert team.
Ivy League is CMAI’s Initiative to bring together a group of like-minded brand owners/manufacturers and collectively think of taking the domestic garment industry to an altogether different level.
