ShopClues is expanding its fashion business by bringing on board more local brands and enhancing product offerings, a move that will steer the e-commerce marketplace towards overall profitability.
ShopClues, which focuses on value and mid-price segments, aims to hit overall profitability by the first half of 2018- 19.
Talking about the lifestyle segment, ShopClues Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer Radhika Aggarwal said the current size of Indias apparel and lifestyle market is estimated to be over USD 90 billion but only 2 per cent of this is online.
“However, this (lifestyle) is also the fastest growing category and reaches 24 per cent of online consumers in India,” she told Pixr8.
The lifestyle segment is fast growing with intense competition among not just fashion e-tailers like Myntra but also larger e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart.
Presently, the lifestyle category (clothing, footwear and accessories) contributes to 50 per cent of ShopClues total orders.
“We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category. Growth has been attained while improving the bottom-line and it is a profitable category for us,” she said.
ShopClues works with over two lakh merchants in the fashion category and has an assortment of about four million products.
“We have increased focus on affordable and high quality products and are positioning ourselves as the e-commerce destination for Bharat,” Aggarwal said.
She added that the category will play a crucial role in reaching overall profitability by the first half of financial year 2018-19.
Headquartered in Gurugram, ShopClues focuses on tier II cities and beyond and reaches 30,000 PIN codes across India.
For the year ended March 2016, Clues Network that runs Shopclues reported total income of Rs 178.61 crore, up from Rs 79.23 crore in the previous year.
The net loss for the year under review increased to Rs 383.05 crore compared to Rs 101.37 crore for the previous fiscal, as per data available with the Registrar of Companies.
The unicorn (valuation of over USD 1 billion) has investors like Sovereign Wealth Fund GIC Pte Ltd, Tiger Global Management LLC, Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners.