Rumours of Snapdeal acquiring Exclusively have been around for few days and now it is finally confirmed. Snapdeal has acquired online Fashion & designer apparel portal Exclusively for an undisclosed sum.
Fashion is one of the hottest categories for ecommerce sites in India. Flipkart acquired Myntra last year to shore up their Apparel business, Amazon launched a dedicated fashion section just a couple of months back. While Snapdeal does have an apparel section, it has does not feature high end or designer clothes.
With acquisition of Exclusively, Snapdeal will be able to become a more prominent player in online fashion business. In an official statement, Snapdeal Founder & CEO said, “We have witnessed a surge in the demand from consumers across the country for premium and luxury products, however, given that access to luxury brands is severely limited in our country, we have brought Exclusively into our family to provide our 40 million+ users the access to widest range of aspirational, high end products and services,”
Exclusively will remain a separate brand (Just as Flipkart has done with Myntra) and will operate as a independent site.
This acquisition will allow Snapdeal to go neck and neck with likes of Flipkart and Amazon in fashion vertical, although Exclusively is still more of a niche player. However, with coming under Snapdeal’s fold, Exclusively will be able to use Snapdeal’s back end operations and logistics support helping them to scale across India. Sunjay Guleria and Mohini Boparai-Guleria, co-Founders of Exclusively, said in the statement, “With Exclusively’s fashion experience and Snapdeal’s scale of operations, we look forward to not just servicing large metros, but also the aspirational demand in smaller towns across India”
Exclusively was founded in 2010 and currently has some of the most leading fashion designers on board including Manish Malhotra, Tarun Tahiliani, and Ritu Kumar. They have comprehensive collection of designer apparel and accessories from more than 200 brands.
Snapdeal on the other hand has over 100,000 sellers on their platform and logistics network spanning 5000 towns and cities in India. They are currently flush with funds with $627 million investment from Softbank coming in October last year. They have so far raised nearly $1.5 Billion from clutch of investors that includes Rata Tata.
While the online fashion space is still at nascent stage in India, it is growing at break neck speed and none of top Ecommerce sites can ignore this space!
