GENERALISTS Vs SPECIALISTS

India has hundreds of vertical retail platforms which specialise in fashion, beauty, furniture, grocery and so on. These are typically start-ups funded by private equity companies. As India heads to an era where deep-pocketed biggies dominate, many have started aligning with the biggies. Reliance recently bought furniture retailer Urban Ladder for ` 182 crore which, according to industry sources, is a distress price. Despite being the first mover in online furniture, Urban Ladder found it difficult to survive on its own and had no choice but to align with a large player. Flipkart acquired online fresh food and vegetable platform Ninjacart. The coming months will see more such entities coming into the fold of larger platforms. “Each of them is looking at a play through which they can keep their customers on their platform and are acquiring interesting vertical businesses,” explains Govind Shrikhande, Former MD, Shoppers Stop.

So, what happens to the likes of Nykaa, First Cry or Pepperfry which are doing extremely well? The ` 1,200 crore beauty and fashion company Nykaa is profitable. Industry experts believe only market leaders in these verticals will survive the test of time. The rest will either wind up or ally with a larger platform. Lalit Agrawal, Chairman and MD, V-Mart, doesn’t buy this argument. “The China story will not be repeated in India. We are a country full of entrepreneurs and start-ups, Indians will come up with different models, there will be continuous evolution of newer business models. I don’t think India will ever have a platform culture. I see horizontals as well as verticals doing equally well.” In countries where horizontals such as Amazon, Walmart or Tesco are present, specialists like Macy’s, Zara or Sephora do well too.