Myntra's Fashion Business Is Now Profitable, Overall Profitability by March 2018

At a press conference in Bengaluru on Thursday, fashion brand Myntra announced that its Myntra Fashion Business - the 13 private apparel brands under the company - are now EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation) profitable, with a 5 percent profitability margin. Of these, the biggest private brand is Roadster, for which Myntra launched an offline store earlier this year.

Speaking at the conference, Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan said that the Myntra Fashion Brands have been growing at a 100 percent year over year rate - they were at a revenue of $150 million (roughly Rs. 959 crores) in June 2016, and are now at $300 million (roughly Rs. 1,917 crores) by themselves.

"If you think about it, these brands are now bigger than some e-commerce sites," said Narayanan, adding that Myntra as a whole is still on track for profitability by the end of the financial year, or March 2018.

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Myntra, along with its parent company Flipkart, and Jabong (which it acquired in 2016), sees itself as a tech and fashion company, Narayanan added, saying that the company uses technology across brands, and uses consumer data to identify white spaces in the market it can fill. "We also did a lot of work on the supply chain," he said.

Myntra's Manohar Kamath (L) and Ananth Narayanan (R)

Manohar Kamath, Head, Myntra Fashion Brands, said that the company has been building the business steadily, adding that it would have been possible to become profitable sooner, but it was important to build scale as well.

"We use a lot of technology, we are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to determine products, and even prices," he said. "We have two tech led brands, Moda Rapido and now a new one called Here & Now, and these are the two fastest growing brands in our portfolio."

That said, the biggest brand for the platform by far is still Roadster, which Narayanan said will cross $100 million (roughly Rs. 639 crores) by the end of the year. Offline continues to be an important part of the business, he continued, though Kamath added that sales aren't a focus area for the store, but rather brand engagement.

Going forward, Myntra Fashion Brands will continue to invest in technology and design, along with marketing as it brings more of its brands into national brands that are sold not just on Myntra but on other storefronts too, Kamath said.

Myntra overall will continue to focus on technology, Narayanan said, and added, "another area where we will spend more money will be on content, to build engagement with users."