Homegrown online marketplace ShopClues, India’s third largest, is one of the few ecommerce players that is on the brink of profitability. As per a report in the Economic Times, ShopClues is betting big on fashion, a category within which it expects to start making money in the next couple of months.
In fact, it is also in the process of gearing up for an IPO. And though it is a US-registered company, it is open to listing on the Indian bourses.
Speaking to ET, Radhika Aggarwal, chief business officer, ShopClues said that fashion is the first category that will start making money very soon. “We are on course for achieving profitability for the company as a whole in the first or second quarter of the next financial year,” she added.
What’s interesting is that fashion is one category, apart from technology, that is an extremely crowded space and sees stiff competition. Right from big names like Myntra, Jabong to smaller but popular players like Limeroad, YepME, there are multiple players in this category.
ShopClues plans on spending five to six crore rupees on a television campaign that it recently launched for its fashion category.
Of the 200,000-odd sellers on ShopClues, nearly half a million merchants sell fashion products. It is also working on bringing on board several small brands onto the platform.
As per the ET report, ShopClues claims to have doubled fashion shipments by two-and a-half times over the past year, since it ramped up investments in this space, particularly in developing technology around product personalisation, discovery and analytics. And while Radhika did not comment on the revenue generated out of the fashion category, she told ET that the category contributes to over 50% of the company’s GMV and a much larger portion of its revenues.