Myntra which had gone app only last year, has now reopened its mobile website. Myntra does not want to lose out on customers who don’t use the app or are not interested in installing the app. The company still plans to focus only on mobile strategy as it claims that the majority traffic is from mobile.
Flipkart owned Myntra after reporting a loss of Rs 740 crore is planning to foray into the US market and has set up a subsidiary of Myntra Inc. The e-commerce player plans to achieve profitability by 2017 and thus is looking for opportunities. Myntra had reported losses of R173 crore in FY14.
By the end of December 2015, there were over 2000 brands on the Myntra platform, of which 800 new brands had been on-boarded in 2015. The top brands for the year were Roadster, Puma, Nike, Vero Moda & UCB.
Myntra has decided to drop their app-only ‘long-term strategy’ and is rolling out a mobile website, which is currently under pilot testing. The development came after their app-only strategy backfired with a steep fall in traffic and sales.
After so much of noise about the beef ban, RSS voluteers now want the government to take action against Myntra for selling cow leather shoes!. Myntra’s first response? An immediate sorry (which wasn’t needed). But this just goes on to say how deep these issues can hurt businesses.
FlipKart/Myntra’s assumption that people who prefer web/m-site will all ‘eventually’ move to app is untenable at best. Customers have way too many options to get dictated by one brand.
Delivery staff for Flipkart and Myntra in Mumbai have been on strike since Monday. Supported by the Mumbai Navnirman Sena, the workers are demanding benefits such as bathrooms at delivery centers, a 6 day working week, fixed duty hours and medical insurance for those that ride bikes. The E-commerce companies have claimed that the strike is because of misguided interests.
Ola and Myntra will flag off ‘LookGood Express’, dedicated cabs from Ola, armed with all goodies to offer a complete makeover to customers across Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata on August 2nd. LookGood Express will have a personal style advisor from Myntra who will gather relevant styling details required to design a cool new look for them.
Since the App-only decision there is a steep down fall in their ranking as well as traffic. Based on the stats from Alexa, presently this is ranked as 289 in India and fell down 713 positions from global ranking perspective.
Ananth Narayanan is a 15-year McKinsey veteran who heads product development in Asia and the consulting firm’s automotive practice in India. He earlier helped establish McKinsey’s China sourcing centre. Mukesh Bansal will take the position of chairman of the board, and also focus on the Flipkart commerce platform.