Myntra’s New Growth Map: Gen Z, smaller cities, quick fashion

Fashion ecommerce platform Myntra is eyeing opportunities around the evolving needs of Gen Z, the growing market in Tier II and Tier III cities, and the increasing need for relevance, personalisation, and speed among customers.

This was stated by Nandita Sinha, CEO of Myntra, in a conversation with YourStory founder and CEO Shradha Sharma.

“In the last few years, everybody was talking about moving away from demographics being the centrepoint of how you build businesses. But we are at that moment where Gen Z as a consumer group is really going to be the centrepoint of all of the industries that we are a part of,” she said.

“They behave very differently, they are unafraid, they are digitally native. The way they look at every consumption opportunity is very different from their millennial counterpart. So, I think that itself is a very very big opportunity that we are going after,” said Nandita. 

In 2023, Myntra launched FWD, a platform that caters to Gen Z customers. In this platform, she said, “we are enabling selection, enabling experiences, enabling ways of buying which are very unique for the Gen Z customer, and also reaching out to them in a unique way.” About 20 million Gen Z customers are transacting with Myntra on a yearly basis, compared with about 8 million a year back. 

Growth Outside the Metros

Since Myntra started out in 2007, it has largely focussed on tier 1 and metro cities. It now sees an opportunity in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Nandita said, “The size of the market may be larger in Delhi, but if you look at the northeast or cities in Bengal and Bihar, the growth that you are seeing over there and also the growth in fashion, like when you look at search terms etc, you see that there is a spike in very high trend new-to-market fashion over there.” 

The same holds true for towns like Indore or Dehradun that have a high student population.

Myntra is looking to ”leverage technology to personalise deeply to help these consumers get products faster than what they would otherwise get, and to enable brands which are locally relevant for these consumers.”

The e-commerce platform has also used regional influencers in these smaller cities.

“We realize that they did better than any other campaign that we had done,” Nandita said. “Suddently, it unlocked the power of what we could do just by localising more, personalising more for these cities while giving them access to everything that is global and national.”

Not Just Kajal & Lipstick

Two other upcoming focus areas for Myntra are about going deeper into the “lifestyle occasions of the consumer.” An example of this is the beauty space, where it has grown “almost 3x of market every year.” 

Nandita said, “They are happy to explore beauty because they believe this is my trusted platform. So, how do you go and expand into further into because, even 15 years back, India was a kajal and lipstick market.”

She said, “But now that two has gone to five. So, it’s a growing market, and has a lot of potential for online penetration. How do you kind of go deep there?”

Home is another focus area for Myntra. So is quick fashion. Late last year, Myntra started M-Now in Bengaluru. It is a 30-60 minute delivery for fashion. “The speed equation is being redefined in the ecosystem.” she said. 

“If I watch a 2-hour film on Netflix or I watch a 30-second short video, my expectations of quality are the same. So, that’s what we are doing. That is something we will double down on.” 

Fashion is Always On

The broader trend—beyond the opportunity with Gen Z, interest in smaller towns, and the need for speed, relevance, and personalisation—points to a significant shift in the way Indians engage with fashion today. 

Nandita said, “Celebrating your Indianness is becoming very, very cool.” Also, “Every festival is being celebrated with a lot of joy and a lot of festivity, and a lot of mixing of old and new traditions.” While fashion has always been a part of such celebration, its role has “increased manifold” in the last five to seven years.

With more people moving cities, all of those celebrations have become pan-India ones, she said. “Everyone in Bangalore will celebrate all festivals. Everyone in Delhi will celebrate all festivals, and therefore that cultural moment has helped fashion and brands and platforms like ourselves tap into the consumer’s life.”

Weddings have also become grand events, fuelling fashion in one sense. 

Everything—from an IPL tournament to a Coldplay concert—is an opportunity for the fashion industry. Nandita said fashion has changed completely from what it used to be—buying three or four times a year. “It’s becoming 365 days of something or the other.” And, therefore, “There are many occasions to buy fashion. Brands have to get on to this bandwagon because people are searching for the ‘Karva Chauth’ saree, or the Diljit concert or ‘Chhath puja’.”

Beyond Just Leveraging AI 

Myntra understands AI is a key aspect of the future. Nandita said the company wants to make “AI a way of life” and not something that it ends up just leveraging. 

The e-commerce platform has already introduced AI-based tools such as MyFashionGPT and Maya. “Imagine a future where every consumer had a personal assistant for shopping fashion, and they could really tell you what you want to buy, what suits you, what are the brands you bought last time, and therefore what you should try out, what’s new… And we started on that journey with MyFashionGPT.”

Then, she said, “We went into conversational commerce with Maya. How do we make shopping very personal for each consumer in a very native way, because either consumers will shop through video and content or through how we talk every day.”

Regarding the sellers on the platform, she said, “Imagine again a world where you had a personal key account manager 24/7 available to you to solve all the problems to help you with growth etc.” There are many ways that AI will solve problems on the customer side even before they are encountered, Nandita said.