Reliance-Owned Omnichannel Platform Fynd Partners With Flipkart

Reliance-owned offline-to-online (O2O) omnichannel platform Fynd, has announced a partnership with Walmart-owned ecommerce company Flipkart, ahead of the Diwali festive season in India. The purpose of the partnership is to extend Fynd’s omnichannel strategy and help more brands sell with ease on Flipkart. 

It is worth noting that Reliance’s online store JioMart competes with Flipkart in the ecommerce space.

Fynd works with brands and retailers to enable their store inventory to be shoppable across different online and offline channels beyond the store. Online customers can buy these products on the Fynd App, Fynd.com, the brand’s own website, prominent marketplaces like Amazon, Myntra, Tata CLiQ, Ajio, Google and now Flipkart, among others. 

Fynd also enables retailers to become omnichannel using its in-store solution, Fynd Store. Using this, brand stores can sell products that are not physically present in the store.

With the Flipkart partnership, Fynd’s merchants can activate their physical stores on the Flipkart marketplace, gain access to a bigger audience, while being able to manage inventory and orders within Fynd.

Some of the benefits of being a seller on Flipkart will now accrue to Fynd’s network of brands and retailers. These include —Flipkart Assured tag on Day 1 for all their products, automatic order assignment to the nearest store saving the logistics cost and participation in the Flipkart loyalty program, among others. 

The collaboration between the two companies would see more than 30 new brands go live on Flipkart’s online platform. These include Red Chief, Globus, Spykar, Celio and Ruosh. 

“Our expertise is in omnichannel commerce, and Covid-19 has accelerated its demand. Flipkart is a trusted marketplace, and with this integration, we offer brands the opportunity to reach new customers, maximise product discovery, and grow sales,” said Farooq Adam, cofounder of Fynd. 

Founded as Shopsense Retail Technology Pvt Ltd by Adam, Harsh Shah and Shreeraman MG in 2012, the company pivoted to Fynd in 2015. It has around 250 employees and is based out of Mumbai. The company claims to have inventory access to more than 9,000 stores. 

In January this year, Inc42 reported the launch of Fynd’s artificial intelligence-based fashion product searching tool — Fynd Now.

The Fynd Now tool helps users to search for any fashion products by just providing an image of the product which they want to buy from Fynd’s online fashion platform. A user can simply do so by clicking the Fynd Now button or cropping an item he (or she) wants to buy from anything visual on the internet.

Leveraging AI, the new tool identifies the products shown in an image or a video and recommends the same or similar products from the Fynd catalogue.

Last year, Fynd launched Uniket, to allow shopkeepers from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities to get direct access to the fashion brand’s inventory. The platform allows shopkeepers to buy complete clothing sets, which they usually buy from a wholesale market, with around 45% margin. Moreover, by signing up for Uniket, shopkeepers can set up their own website and app with a selling capacity of over 50K products from more than 50 brands.

Meanwhile, as the festive season nears, major ecommerce players in India such as Amazon and Flipkart are pulling out all the stops to capitalise on the opportunity in what has otherwise been a difficult year for all sectors due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Flipkart’s flagship Big Billion Days sale will run from October 16-21, 2020, and the company is betting on video commerce and new seller signups to lure shoppers. The company is also promoting its latest B2B offering Flipkart Wholesale to expand its suite of offerings during the season, besides claiming to have onboarded at least 50,000 kirana stores as part of the company’s push to promote small and medium businesses.