Udaan aims to have 100 exclusive brands in tie-up with small garment makers

Udaan, India’s largest business-to-business e-commerce platform, aims to create over 100 exclusive brands in partnership with small garment manufacturers through its Lifestyle business. This business comprises clothing, accessories, and footwear. This move is in line with its vision of empowering small businesses of Bharat (rural India and small towns and cities)  through the power of B2B e-commerce.

Bengaluru-based Udaaan’s Lifestyle business in the past 12 months has worked and already created over 20 exclusive brands in partnership with small garment manufacturers. It plans to further scale its operations to have over 50 exclusive brands on its platform in the next one year and over 100 brands in the next few years. The firm said it has partnered with small businesses to offer best in class quality garments at affordable prices to serve the needs of Bharat.

“Over the past one year we have made significant investments to help local garment manufacturers achieve scale and get access to the national market especially in the tier-2 and tier-3 towns and cities of Bharat,” said Vipul Mathur, head (Exclusive Lines), Lifestyle Business, Udaan. “Our intent is to identify, help scale and create over 100 such exclusive brands from small manufacturing hubs and provide them the technical know-how to achieve growth.”

For the creation of exclusive brands, the ‘in-house’ expert team of Udaan work closely with small garment manufacturers. It provides them with the requisite expertise of brand creation, content making, product quality improvement and technical know-how to create and sell their garments exclusively on the Udaan platform. Small manufacturers benefit from this exercise as they get to create their own brand with help from Udaan, which results in the expansion of their business in tier 2 and tier 3 cities and towns. The small retailers also gain as they get access to high-quality products at the most affordable prices, ultimately benefiting the end consumer of Bharat. Most of the manufacturers come from major textile hubs spread across tier-2 and tier-3 regions such as Tirupur, Howrah, Ludhiana and Rajkot.

The garment industry in India consists of over one lakh units and currently employs about 6 million workers, both directly and indirectly. It is estimated the garment industry is a Rs 1 trillion industry with 25 per cent consisting of exports and the remaining 75 per cent for domestic consumption.

The 20 brands that Udaan helped to create and scale up, were local businesses that had limited reach and penetration. Today with the help of Udaan, these exclusive brands have been successful in expanding their business. These businesses have seen a multifold increase and now serve customers nationally.

Udaan exclusive brands have been specially created to help and empower small businesses – including manufacturers and retailers of Bharat to compete with established brands. It is also helping them to  be competitive in the marketplace and provide the end customers quality garments at affordable prices.

“Earlier my business was restricted and was catering to only local shops. But after partnering with Udaan with its extensive network of retailers, we have been able to access the national markets,” said Ajay Nanda who runs Krishna Textiles from Ahmedabad. “We witnessed good growth in business in the last one year. With Udaan’s help, I am planning to introduce more clothing lines and enter new segments.”

While there has been strong adoption of the platform by small and medium businesses, even large manufacturers, and brands such as Amul Comfy, maxx, Jockey, Arvind and Shoppers Stop, have also partnered with Udaan. The other such large brands include BIBA, Rangriti, Lifestyle, Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Hummel, Relaxo and Aqualite.

Hitesh Bhandari, a textile manufacturer from Bengaluru said that his family has been running the textile business for over 100 years. But the business was severely hit due to the pandemic. “We had to incur huge losses and had to let go a lot of people,” said Bhandari. “But with the help from Udaan for e-retailing, I was able to launch ‘Style’ exclusive brand on the platform.”

Launched in 2016, Udaan’s lifestyle business has about 4000 brands and sellers and 1.5 lakh operating retailers and buyers. The segment contributes about 17-20 per cent of Udaan's overall gross merchandise value (GMV).

“Post the launch of our exclusive brands on the Udaan platform we have witnessed about 55 per cent of repeat buyers and each buyer on an average buys twice a month from us,” said Mathur. “This trend clearly validates, we are heading in the right direction and ensuring quality products are delivered to our buyers at affordable prices.”

Udaan has over 3 million registered users and about 30,000 sellers on the platform. The platform caters to over 2 million retailers, chemists, kirana shops, HoReCa (hotel, restaurant, cafe) and farmers doing over 4.5 million transactions per month, making Udaan a leader in the b2b e-commerce business. The company operates one of the largest logistics and supply chain networks – through UdaanExpress - with over 200 warehouses spread over 10 Mn Sq Ft delivering to retailers in over 900 cities covering over 12000 pin codes across the country. To cater to the growing demand, Udaan plans to scale its warehouse capacity to over 50 million Sq Ft across the country in the next 7-8 years.