Abof.com, the online fashion venture of the Aditya Birla Group, will steer clear of offering deep discounts to capture market share and will instead focus on offering personalised experiences to win customers, a top executive said.
The portal, which competes with Myntra and Jabong, is targeting a 15 per cent share of the country’s online fashion market by 2019-20 and expects to break even within five years.
“We will never go for deep discounts for the biggest brands, unlike other portals. Rather, we would give customers personalised experience through our portal. We are in the business for a segment of consumers who are looking to see more curated, selected merchandise and not the largest range,” Prashant Gupta, ceo and president of abof.com said.
Although a late entrant, the group sees “a billion dollar opportunity” for abof.com in the fashion market. “We tried to check if any acquisitions were possible before starting our own venture,” Gupta said.
The company recently introduced a 3D “trial room” in partnership with UK-based firm Metail. “Companies have been talking about such technologies but we are the first one to implement it through our portal,” he said.
The virtual trial room allows customers to try out fashion options and it has almost doubled the time they spend on the portal. Also as a result, return rates are down to almost zero compared with the industry average of about 20 per cent.
