Myntra eyes billion-dollar biz from Rapid tech
BENGALURU: Myntra is aiming to turn its ambitious Rapid technology platform into a billion-dollar business by 2020-21, even as the Flipkart-owned online fashion retailer builds out new offerings using the technology product, including selling it as a service and outsourcing it to big brands both in India and abroad, a top company executive said.
In an interview, Myntra chief executive Ananth Narayanan said the fashion retailer is planning to create a separate organisation of sorts for the Rapid project, with a different leadership structure, internal processes and even its own human resources team. Myntra has tasked two senior leaders Manohar Kamath and Ambarish Kenghe with overseeing the growth and development of Rapid.
“If I look at Rapid as a business, if I take a 2020-view, I expect Rapid to be a billion-dollar business in itself. And the components of that are the following -there will be private brands of Myntra that are actually done completely through Rapid. These are brands like Moda Rapido, Here & Now, etc. Secondly, we expect to actually do brands jointly with other brand partners even globally and we are in dis- cussions with them, using this tech and even distributing globally,” said Narayanan.
Through Rapid, Myntra is looking to create a huge alternative source of revenue and exploring several ways to leverage the platform — including outsourcing the Rapid platform to other retailers and also start selling the software platform as part of an as-a-service or cloud computing-like offering. Myntra’s bet on Rapid in some ways will mirror Amazon’s bet on cloud computing through Amazon Web Services, Narayanan said.
So far, Myntra, which has been working on the Rapid project for nearly three years, has held talks with more than five retailers and brands to sign up to the platform.
“(We want to) offer Rapid as a service, which is basically to offer it as a paid software-as-a-service to a bunch of brands. We’re actually close to closing three of them. These are paid, multi-year deals. That also is a 70-80% margin business. It’s very profitable... It’ll likely be a subscription type service and we’ll offer it based on the number of styles. So it’ll be pay per style,” said Narayanan.
Myntra is working on building out at least two new private brands, with the help of analysis from the Rapid platform, he said.
Myntra has already created two private brands called Moda Rapido and Here&Now, using insights from Rapid. Over the past six months, both Moda Rapido and Here&Now have emerged as the fastest growing private brands in Myntra’s portfolio of private label brands that include Roadster and HRX.
Following the success of the two brands, Myntra has decided that all new private brands will be created using Rapid.
Moda Rapido and Here&Now together bring in sales of ₹14-15 crore every month, making them among the top 15 brands at Myntra. The two contribute 13% of Myntra’s private brands sales.