Targets have been set; plans have been drawn; warehousing and logistics teams put on standby; and the workforce has been vaccinated and ready to put in long hours. Thanks to the sales orchestrated e-commerce biggies Flipkart, Amazon, and Myntra in India, October has come to be associated with a degree of madness when it comes to online shopping. With the addition of Ajio’s Big Bold Days, the rush for bargains has only gathered steam.
The Reliance Retail-owned shopping portal has been around for over five years, and launched its annual sale in 2019. But it wasn’t until recently that Ajio entered the big leagues. “The pandemic accelerated Ajio’s growth,” says a former Ajio executive. According to Reliance Industries annual reports, Ajio’s revenue grew 4X between March 2020 and March 2021.
The turning point for the company was the Covid-19 pandemic. Reliance had tons of inventory just sitting in malls and its other retail stores for months on end, and no way to offload any of it.
Enter, Ajio.
As India’s first nationwide lockdown eased, the company’s daily orders jumped 5X, according to two other former Ajio executives. It went from around 20,000 orders per day in December 2019 to over 100,000 orders per day in June 2020. The three former Ajio executives, along with other former and current employees from e-commerce firms in India, spoke to The Ken on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorised to speak to the media.
Ajio isn’t the only e-commerce player that grew during the pandemic. Its biggest competitor, Flipkart-owned Myntra, saw a 2X rise in daily orders—going from 100,000 orders a day pre-pandemic to more than 200,000 orders after the first wave of Covid, say executives in the industry. Flipkart and Myntra control 60% 60% Business Insider Reliance-backed AJIO is riding the Indian e-commerce wave — poses tough competition to Myntra Read more of the online fashion retail market, according to a 2020 report by Bank of America.
Ajio is gaining ground, though. According to a report from investment bank Goldman Sachs, which sourced data from analytics firm Sensor Tower, Ajio’s monthly app downloads have been neck-and-neck with Myntra’s since the pandemic began. For several months, especially in early 2021, Ajio even beat Myntra. In addition, Ajio has also emerged as a more popular more popular Economic Times Saurabh Srivastava takes over as new head of Amazon Fashion Read more sales channel than Amazon for some fashion brands.
