Online Fashion Retailer Myntra has become the first shopping retailer to shut down the website from May 1 and function as an only mobile entity over applications. This drastic step was hinted by Myntra that its online presence may fade out during this year, thanks to the growing number of internet usage over the smart phones in India.
Flipkart, who acquired Myntra the last year for Rs 2,000 crores, have both shut down their mobile websites, thus urging the users to download an application to use it. Myntra has been working on a 360 degree campaign announcing the big news of its only app- presence going forward, which will be released soon, say the sources.
Currently Myntra draws as much as 70 per cent of the traffic and 80 per cent of its sales is through its mobile app. It also has determined plans to take the sales to 90 per cent by the end of this year. The better half – Flipkart, too, draws around 60 per cent of its sales from the same.
According to Mukesh Bansal, co-founder of Myntra and CMO of Flipkart, the growth on the mobile platform has been rapid because fashion shopping is quite impulsive. Myntra is focused on the mobile platform and will be making major investments in this platform going forward.
“Bansal had in the February 7 report said “We are (Myntra) 100% focused on mobile and making all our investments on the platform going forward”. In a recent interaction with TOI, Sachin Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart, had said that desktops weren’t giving the same return on investments anymore compared to a few years ago. Bansal said Flipkart would keep an eye out for more acquisitions in the mobile space, going forward.” As quoted in The times of India.
Online shopping penetration that is then the number of people shopping online is expected to increase from 9 per cent in 2013 to 36 per cent in 2020, a recent Morgan Stanley report said.
The download helps to retain the users’ consumerism and also lowers down the costs of the advertisements. The Internet & Mobile Association of India estimates that total internet users amounted to over 300 million in December 2014, with close to 60% via a mobile connection.
Myntra’s biggest rivals in the field of fashion still persist to be Amazon and Snapdeal is expected to complete the sales of $ 1 billion.
Tags: amazon Flipkart myntra Snapdeal
