Myntra

The seller was fine, Flipkart was not.

There were similar complaints about Myntra, Meesho and others.

Again, the problem is not limited to food and cosmetics.

Publishers whose books are hijacked by unauthorized sellers on Amazon, Flipkart and other platforms face the same problem.

I think, and that's an interesting point because, you know, the way my daughter, by the way, she discovers some of these lifestyle items is when she'll go to Instagram and circle certain items.

And then maybe that particular product is available on Myntra, right? And that's how she perhaps discovers Myntra.

But that use case still continues to be there.

There are going to be certain kinds of use cases where you still want to get to that destination site.

Before this, he worked on Lehman Brothers trading floor in Tokyo, watching a 150-year-old bank fail in real time.

Then product at Myntra, one of India's biggest online retailers.

Then enterprise artificial intelligence at Instabase, selling into some of the big- largest banks in the world.

Now, with ComplyJet, nine people, three straight quarters of profitable growth, customers in about 25 countries.

But, um, while I was at McKinsey in my consulting job, I was staying a lot in hotels, so that's the closest I've gotten to hotels in general.

But yeah, back in 2015, uh, after a short stint at Myntra, was, was thinking about what to do next, and travel in general seemed like an exciting space, uh, because we could see the income pyramid of the country shifting, and it was evident that a lot more people will start traveling than what we had seen in the 10 years before.

And therefore, it seemed exciting to build value brands in the travel space, and that's what Treebo was all about.

So it's been over 10 years since, uh, Ankita, Pranav, and I started StayVista.

Picture the screen of a senior executive at Myntra, India's biggest online fashion retailer.

There is an Excel sheet open tracking the rivals that Myntra watches most closely.

Flipkart Fashion, Amazon Fashion, Reliance's Ajio, Meesho.

But there is one name missing, Nykaa Fashion.

It wanted to look premium, and in some way, it genuinely was.

The average Nykaa Fashion shopper spent around 4,500 rupees per order.

On Myntra and Ajio for comparison, that same number sits closer to 1,500 to 2,500.

So people were spending more per order on Nykaa.

We talk about founding and funding stories.

Tell me a little bit about Flipkart, also Myntra, how you brought them together.

How much of it was instinct and what was math?

So I don't think we had any math.

... good success.

Mm.

Uh, the next generation was Myntra and Flipkart.

Yeah.

So this deal, that deal.

And we've seen, you know, Flipkart and Amazon and Myntra have these sales.

Is it slightly being overdone now? Because you almost always know the sale is around the corner anyway.

I mean, yes, there's a sale on right now, but big deal.

Next, I think Instagram and smartphones, you know, both started to grab attention that led to the arrival of a younger customer who was more willing to experiment unlike their parents.

And then rise of e-commerce in India, focus on beauty as a category by Amazon and Myntra and launch of specialty beauty retailers like Nykaa made it possible for customers outside of metro cities to shop online.

And then transparency and efficacy also played a big role.

Consumers became smarter and started to look for products that were transparent in terms of ingredients and more effective, who were thereby drawn to ingredient-led, highly efficacious skincare products that K-Beauty is all about.