Yepme eyes to open 400 offline stores

India: Yepme, an online fashion retailer aims to foray into brick-and-mortar format by opening 400 outlets by the end of fiscal year. The company has opted for Omni channel growth and has recently opened four stores in Gurgaon, in the next 4-5 years’ company plans to extend its presence in more than 550 districts of the country. 

The company aims to have 400 retail stores across the country and the area of stores would be 600,000 sq. ft. and out of these 400 stores around 20 percent will be in the metro cities and remaining will be in the small scale towns. The 4 stores which are in Gurgaon are company owned but for these 400 stores company would be opting franchise model.

Company’s 30 percent of sales comes from developed metro cities but remaining 70 percent comes from tier II, III & IV places, so in order to tap the opportunities from these regions company is covering 550 districts across India and plans to have a network of around 1,000 stores in coming 4-5 years.

In comparison of FY 2013-14 companies Gross merchandise volume (GMV) has increased significantly as from $9 million it had increased to $27 million in FY 2013-14 and has rapidly rises to $65 million in FY 2015-16.

According to TechSci Research, the opening of offline stores would fuel the growth of the company and will help the company to generate more and more revenues. In order to increase the customer base and presence, online retailers are focusing on opening stores which will help them to reach the customers who are not tech savvy and use internet for online shopping. Increasing presence through offline stores will work as a differentiation strategy as online retailers can closely connect to the customers and further create an impact in the minds of the customers. 

According to a recent report published by TechSci Research, “India E-commerce Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2020”, the country’s e-commerce market is projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 36% during 2015-2020. E-services segment, which comprises online travel, online payments, online classifieds, etc., is expected to continue its domination through 2020. However, the e-tail segment that includes electronics, apparels & accessories, health and personal care, etc., is expected to witness significantly higher market growth compared to e-services segment over the next five years. During 2015-20, the western region is expected to remain the largest e-commerce market in the country. Major players operating in India’s e-tail market include Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon.