Fashion retailer Myntra enters social commerce, a $70 bn market by 2030

Unveils M- Live, a first-of-its-kind interactive and real-time shopping experience for shoppers in the country

Online fashion retailer Myntra announced its foray into Social Commerce at scale, to cater to the rapidly evolving content consumption patterns and shopping preferences of consumers. Social commerce, which is the use of social network communities to drive e-commerce sales, is expected to be about a $70 billion market opportunity in the next few years, according to analysts.

As a part of this launch Walmart-owned Myntra also unveiled M- Live, a first-of-its-kind interactive and real-time shopping experience for shoppers in the country. With the launch of its Social Commerce charter, Myntra is looking to transform the way consumers shop by bridging the gap between inspiration and commerce while bringing both under one single platform. Under this charter, Myntra will target fashion and social media savvy young men and women who are looking to have access to the best-in-class fashion advisory and in-demand trends.

With the new initiative, Myntra is is competing with other social e-commerce firms and start-ups, such as SoftBank-backed Meesho,  DealShare, BulBul, GlowRoad, Mall91, and simsim

“At the heart of our Social Commerce initiative, is our desire to offer unparalleled content-led shopping formats to our customers, while harnessing the power of the creator ecosystem and technology,” said Achint Setia, vice president and business head, Social Commerce, Myntra. “Built for today’s consumers who are gradually progressing from text-based or catalogue- based shopping to influencer-guided interactive experiences, the charter also offers brands an avenue to build salience with a highly engaged fashion-forward customer base, for new launches, collaborations, and showcase hero products along with a host of other benefits.”

Today, social platforms are considered to drive about 70 per cent of purchase decisions for fashion-forward consumers with fashion and beauty being the most popular categories in the Social Commerce realm as per industry reports. Pivoted on community, connection, and trust, Myntra believes that as the future of shopping, its Social Commerce charter is likely to

play an important role in defining the way its customers shop.

Myntra’s Social Commerce Business has three distinct propositions.With M-Live, its proprietary live video streaming, and live commerce platform, Myntra is further paving the way for the future of shopping. M-Live aims to facilitate a real-time engagement between consumers and brands by allowing influencers and experts to host live video sessions of product and styling concepts curated by them, on the Myntra app, enabling viewers to shop instantly. M-Live is also the nearest to an expert-assisted offline shopping experience that is fully experienced online. The core benefit is the users’ ability to get interactive descriptions of products independently curated by experts they can trust and identify with while getting instant advice on various aspects like styling, fitment, product quality, and material. With several concurrent users joining the live sessions, it also gives users the opportunity to shop as a community. They benefit from the community’s knowledge, observations, questions, and comments, enabling a more confident shopping decision that is backed by social validation.

There is also Myntra Studio, a platform that provides users with access to over 20,000 original, inspirational, and shoppable fashion, beauty, and lifestyle content assets at scale, Myntra Studio has helped establish Myntra as a frontrunner in innovative content-led commerce. The platform has grown by 25X in the last 6 months itself. Some of the leading brands on Myntra have 2-3 times larger communities on Myntra-Studio and witness a 3-4X higher engagement, in comparison to other similar influencer-led platforms. The in-house built platform has managed to attract and induce shopping among the younger and premium shoppers from across the Metros as well as Tier 2 towns and beyond.

“We want to be the most innovative fashion tech company and we want to be democratise fashion bringing it to the tier 2 and 3  three cities of India, and the social commerce is a perfect fit because it is most amenable to fashion, beauty and lifestyle categories,” said Lalitha Ramani, chief product officer, Myntra. “It brings customers, brands and influencers together. It is that recipe that we are trying to find and to address the right needs of the customers.”

Myntra Studio currently engages about 20 per cent of Myntra’s monthly active user base and Myntra expects this to grow to 50 per cent in the next 3-4 years as it scales its Social Commerce charter.

The firm also has  ‘Myntra Fashion Superstar’ platform. This fully shoppable digital reality show continues to churn out some of India’s popular fashion and beauty influencers. With every passing edition, this show has enabled Myntra’s vision of empowering the creator economy. This year’s theme ‘I Wear My Story’ showcases the hunt to find India’s next big fashion influencer and leverages the synergy between iconic fashion trends and social media.

The influencer ecosystem in India has begun to significantly scale up with new digital-first content creators emerging across geographies. With its foray into Social Commerce, Myntra  said it is set to create a new ecosystem for consumer-influencer engagement by providing the necessary turf for hundreds of talented influencers to engage with and acquire new followers under one roof. In addition, with M-Live, Myntra will start by supporting multiple concurrent live streams, and will steadily scale this, with an aim to churn out close to 1000 hours of live content per month in the near future. On Myntra, the influencers would also get the opportunity to partner with leading Indian and global lifestyle brands. It will propel the rise  of a different segment of creators who are relatable, engaging, and confident sellers.

E-commerce—powered by cheap data, supply-side innovations, and digitally savvy customers—has become a $30 billion industry in India in fiscal year 2020. More than 100 million of India’s estimated 572 million Internet users purchase products online.

And the next frontier is social, according to a report titled ‘The Future of Commerce in India – the rise of social commerce’ by Bain & Company in partnership with Sequoia India.

The report expects that social commerce, which is a $1.5 billion to $2 billion market today, will be worth as much as $20 billion in just five years—and will likely hit nearly $70 billion by 2030. In short, India’s social commerce sector will be twice the size of the current e-commerce market within 10 years.