Online fashion e-tailer 'Myntra' to shut its web !!!

Myntra to shut website by 1^st May reads a newsitem – Nothing alarming as this move is a calculated one by them !!  The ‘Jaya’varusham would soon conclude heralding ‘Manmatha’varusham on 14^th of April ~ and many would celebrate the Tamil New Year by purchasing newer things – garments, electronics, Gold, jewellery and more ....

A few decades ago, in the hot May month, parents would go to Godown Street [Chellarams was a famous shop those days !] and buy uniform for their children, head for the local tailor, to have new sets of uniforms stitched in time for school reopening in June ..... slowly readymades pushed such shops and many tailors out of business – now the trend is buying ónline’- e-purchases.  How often do you buy online and how often, you browse the sites announcing ‘lowest ever sale’!! – almost all the smart phones come loaded with ápps’ for such websites and claim to offer higher discount, when purchasing through such applications !

Sometime back there was ‘Diwali Dhamaka’which reportedly was not as hot as ‘billion day’ sale ….  Such  online extravaganzas  put retailers on the back foot.  They started crying that  the discounts offered were over the hill and they cannot match such  high discounts !   It would appear that people are on buying spree, buying even unwanted things when offered on sale and literally placing order over the net for varied items.  Some reports suggest that the  highest of such products are electronics – especially mobile phones; books, clothing, fashion accessories, household goods, office supplies too are high on the list. 

Among the many online sellers - Myntra.com is an Indian e-commerce company of fashion and casual lifestyle products, headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. The company  founded in 2007 by IITians Mukesh Bansal, Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena  focuses  on personalisation of gift items and branded apparel. In a move to enhance the customer experience on its mobile platform,  Myntra is planning to focus more on 3D technology, print technology, image recognition and localisation.  “Many of the technologies that were considered remote are becoming imminent. 3D visualisation, printing, image recognition, virtual reality and the like are getting closer. In the immediate future, they will become a big part of the shopping experience.

TOI reports that Online fashion retailer Myntra will shut its website from May 1, in what seems like a definitive step towards becoming only a mobile app-based retailer.  This will be the first such instance of an e-commerce player transforming into a mobile-only entity as internet usage over smartphones surges in India. TOI first reported in its February 7 edition that Myntra may look to phase out its web presence sometime during this year. However, the decision to shutter the site has been advanced, said sources, who did not want to be named. Flipkart, which acquired Myntra an year ago, may also follow suit if the experiment goes down well with the fashion e-tailer.Both Flipkart and Myntra have already stopped their mobile visitors from being directed to their website for purchases.

Mukesh Bansal, Myntra co-founder and head of commerce at Flipkart, did not respond to TOI's query on the closure of the e-tailer's site. There is a 360-degree advertising and marketing campaign being planned by Myntra to announce its app-only presence going forward, which will be unveiled in the coming weeks, sources said. Currently , Myntra draws as much as 80% of its traffic and 70% of sales from its mobile app. Flipkart, too, registers more than 60% of sales through its app.

Bansal had in the February 7 report said “we are (Myntra) 100% focused on mobile and making all our investments on the platform going forward“. In a recent interaction with TOI, Sachin Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart, had said that desktops weren't giving the same return on investments anymore compared to a few years ago. Bansal said Flipkart would keep an eye out for more acquisitions in the mobile space, going forward.  

Seeing the trend, over the past year or so younger startups have begun operation as mobile-only platforms, a shift from the concept of mobilefirst adopted by the first wave on tech companies. The Internet & Mobile Association of India estimates that total internet users amounted to over 300 million in December 2014, with close to 60% via a mobile connection.

So, more thumbs up – newer smart phones, more browsing and more buying !

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

6^th April 2015.