Flipkart Fashion Launches First Private Label Divastri, An Ethnic Wear Line For Women

Flipkart Fashion has launched its first private label Divastri – an ethnic wear line for women. The newly launched ethnic wear brand will offer a wide selection of more than 1,500 styles of sarees, lehenga cholis and dress materials.

The launch of the new ethnic wear private label has been conceptualised and designed based on the shopper trends on Flipkart Fashion.

As per Flipkart, each fabric has been defined to have certain standards in terms of weight per meter, composition, yarn count/density. Additionally, rigorous tests were also conducted on the fabrics to ensure that they are shrink-proof with zero colour loss.

Speaking on the launch of the first private label, Rishi Vasudev, Head – Flipkart Fashion said, “Over the years, Flipkart Fashion has witnessed tremendous growth both in terms of sales and meeting customer needs. Keeping the momentum going, with our first private label launch Divastri – we aim to meet the rising demand for celebrity and Bollywood inspired looks amongst our growing women customer base.”

The ethnic wear label collection has been curated, keeping in mind key parameters such as the seller’s design capabilities, quality standards, manufacturing and sourcing capabilities. Flipkart plans to increase the number of sellers as the brand grows.

Flipkart Banking On Fashion

Flipkart has been seen aggressively expanding the fashion category in the recent times. The company has also been aggressive in launching numerous sales etc. to boost this category on the platform.

It is also currently running a nine-day ‘Flipkart Fashion’ sale from June 10 that will last till June 18. Prior to this, Flipkart had organised a ‘Fashion Conclave’ in which 200+ brands participated. The company also introduced the ‘Brand Index’ platform during the sale. Brand Index is a differentiated tool launched to showcase – the awareness/consideration/purchase of each brand – indexed to category average and other competitors.

The Flipkart Big 10 sale – a five-day sale event which took place in May 2017, witnessed 5x growth in Fashion category in comparison to the non-sale days.

It is to be noted that the new women focussed ethnic wear private label Divastri under the Flipkart Fashion is the first one, but, its acquired companies – Myntra and Jabong – already have several private labels under their umbrella. Myntra currently owns 11 private labels, including Roadster, All About You, HRX, Wrogn, Anouk, and Ether. These private labels were launched in partnership with celebrities who co-own these brands.

In March 2017, it was reported that Myntra’s private labels will be launched on Jabong. Myntra and Jabong together holds 45% market share in the fashion vertical.While combined with Flipkart – their share in the fashion segment is pegged at 75%.

Flipkart And The Private Label Push

According to official reports, Flipkart currently has a registered customer base of over 100 Mn and offers more than 80 Mn products across 80+ categories along with over 1,00,000 registered sellers. Earlier this year, the company closed a $1.4 Bn funding round led by Tencent, eBay and Microsoft.

Flipkart’s private label foray began years back when the company launched Digiflip (shutdown last year) in consumer electronics and Flippd in apparels to start with. Later, it launched its third private label named Citron that offered products under home appliances and personal healthcare category in 2014. In 2016, the company also announced the launch of private label business under an umbrella brand called Flipkart Smart Buy which will have about 25-30 categories in electronics, electronic accessories and home plastics.

Ecommerce marketplaces require exclusive brands to offer on their platforms to garner more footfalls and for eventual success. There are two main ways of establishing exclusivity i.e. having brands which no one is offering or having a private label of their own – which offers higher margins. The margins offered by a private label can be seen as an important reason along with the unique shopping experience and reduced marketing costs.

According to research by RedSheer, private label in the Indian ecommerce industry accounted for less than 10% of the GMV but this number is expected to grow fast. The research also pointed out that private label as a percentage of fashion will keep on growing.

Flipkart’s rival, Amazon India also has an in-house private fashion label, ethnic wear brand for women named Myx which it launched in December 2016. Myx is not the first private label launched by Amazon, prior to it, the company had launched Symbol, a men’s private fashion label in January last year. The company also has an in-house label AmazonBasics which offers a range of digital and home commodities and accessories.

While the launch of a new private label is generally considered good for online marketplaces, the challenge comes in building out the brand, cracking the business model, and expanding further. Let’s see how the new women centric ethnic wear label ‘Divastri’ and the other private labels under the Flipkart umbrella will help in its war against Amazon and Paytm.