 Hi everyone, my name is Tamreela Sheikh, I'm a correspondent at Exchange for Media. We are here with Sundar Balasubramaniam, the CMO, actually the newest CMO at Vintra, the most loving e-commerce platform and we wanted to have an exclusive chat about what is this plan for the company and how they are going about cutting through the clutter of the D2C platforms. So, Sundar, my first question is about how you are cutting through the D2C clutter and the emergence of a lot of e-commerce platforms right now. Well, good evening and thank you for chatting with me, Vintra. I think it's an interesting point you raise about more and more choices coming for the consumer and if you look back and you kind of step back, I think the larger role that we're trying to do is democratize fashion for consumers in the country. One part of that is how do you enable more and more consumers to be able to buy branded fashion versus unbranded fashion and in that large vision and in that large journey, I honestly believe that if there are more and more players who come there, it will be beneficial for the consumer. So I think that's a one starting point that I think we should acknowledge that it's good for this evolution if there are more people. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child in that respect. For us specifically, what we want to do and I think what Vintra has been successfully doing over the many years is look at every different consumer cohort and understand what their needs are from fashion and provide them a few things and do it consistently. One is just a certain width of selection that is unparalleled. Vintra today offers over 1.7 million styles on the fashion front, which is amazing given our breadth and width of this country. Second is go deep within this. There are so many different categories that are important within the fashion world and we cater to all of them. Some examples of them are international brands. There are D2C brands as you spoke about. There are domestic brands. There's workwear, ethnic wear, Gen Z, which is a whole new cohort. Our ability to provide collection for all of them is important. Make it available at the price points they need is important. But I think the most important of them all is how do you allow for a customer experience that is unparalleled. When they come and shop on Vintra, the ability to discover the latest styles and trends, ability to zoom in on something that is customized to their requirement and need and then of course be able to buy it and get a post purchase service, which is also unparalleled, is something I think what we hold very, very dearly. So for Vintra, when we set out and say we want to enable consumers to look their stylish best every day, these are the key tenets and we'll continue to build on those pieces every year. So I wanted to understand since all the brands are having their own platforms now, how is Vintra helping them in order to gain more or reach to more consumers? My point towards D2C platforms was this, because every brand is summing up with their own websites, every brand wants to reach to the consumer directly. But still, Vintra is doing really well with their providing a platform to these brands to reach out to consumers. So how are you able to do that? I think what Vintra has been able to do over the years is get a user base that is very, very engaged on the app. And a lot of that engagement comes out through the whole selection piece through our user interface, which I would think is best in class to be honest here. And also what we have is properties that drive that engagement. One example of that on the social commerce side is what we have, which is MStudio and MLife, where we have influencers who come on and aid shoppers in their journey. They talk about brands, they talk about styles, they talk about what will work best for different body types, etc. So when that level of engagement happens, users and customers keep coming back. And I think brands understand and appreciate that. For example, in social commerce, our MLife is one of the most sought after properties that brands want to latch on to talk about what they have to offer to consumers in the country. So I think that part of it is what differentiates Mintra, something that we've been honing over the years. Absolutely. So moving on to the next question, Mintra, I have been seeing and personally been purchasing from Mintra and I have been seeing your marketing strategies. You involve a lot of influencers when it comes to going about marketing, because I remember that was this one on Instagram, which was also been taken by Mintra. So I wanted to understand that there is a lot of conversation about influencers using their credibility as a platform that supports influencers with live commerce. How are you leveraging with this kind of marketing? And how do you go about keeping the credibility amongst your consumers when it comes to influence marketing? Got it. So A, first of all, thank you for being a customer of Mintra, as you said, on that note. The way we look at for each customer or consumer who comes onto our platform, what I think they seek is a very authentic relationship with both the fashion brands that they buy into and Mintra in terms of the place where that authenticity translates in different ways. If you step back, if you see, I know you spoke about influencers, but we also use celebrities. Because for certain customer cohorts, that sense of authenticity comes from, I want to see what my favorite movie stars are wearing and which brands they're associated with, and that's the inspiration for them for fashion. For some other customer cohorts, their sense of inspiration and authenticity comes from influencers that they follow on social media. And I think we kind of, depending on the cohort, we would utilize the respective one. On our platform, the role that influencers play on the social commerce piece is to kind of aid shoppers in this process. What are the different styles? What is most suitable for each person and individuality? What are the latest trends? What are the new brands that have come on? So the way we see it is that these influencers on our platform are almost aids to the customers who come there and help make their shopping easier. And when that role is defined that way, I think it's quite easy for customers to see that, believe in it, and the very fact that we have seen our graphic or live session continuously increase over the months that we have done it is testament to that they see value in it. So that's how we kind of utilize influencers on our platform. Absolutely. Moving on, you also spoke about initially in the first question about Gen Z cohort. There is a lot of conversation in marketers as to they are not able to understand this Gen Z cohort all together. But being on Mintra and seeing personally Mintra's journey, you have been a part of conversation in the Gen Z cohort as well. So how do you keep up with that? What is your mantra to be a relevant or a relatable brand to the Gen Z cohort? Got it. So I think honestly as a marketer, we go through this with every cohort when millennials got defined, we had similar problems of how do we really understand them. I think Gen Z of course as a cohort will are and will continue to play a very important role across for all brands of all sizes. They are a cohort that are more uniform across the world that we've ever seen and it's very, very important to kind of untap them. They are a cohort were exceedingly fluid. While they may be rooted in India, they have one eye out on what's happening around the world. So it's very important to tap into that aspiration of theirs. While they want edgy fashion, they will also want it in value and price points that work for them. So there is that dichotomy that you kind of work with. Over the years, what we've seen is that as long as you keep understanding their different needs and wants and you're able to marry that with the service that we can provide, it's kind of a match made in heaven. We've been very lucky and fortunate to have a very, very strong part of our business come from the Gen Z cohort who come back and stick with us. This is a cohort that normally is not very sticky. They are very flirty in their choices, but because we've been able to evolve our offering to them in the right way, we've managed that stickiness. They also look for authenticity and I think that's where our social commerce piece comes in. We've been able to offer that authenticity without being very pushy. Relate to it and they find value in it. Absolutely and I wanted to ask that, you know, Mintra has been doing a lot of associations with celebrities in the last one year as I have been noticing and you know, you have been experimenting a lot with different sort of celebrities, Pete, Radu, Leete, Shrashan, Mahmeet, Tiara, Alman and some others, you know. So how, like what is your marketing mantra this year and you know, how are you going to leverage more on this kind of associations? Yeah, so I think, I mean, more than a marketing mantra, you know, as I like to say it, what's the consumer mantra, right? What they look for when they think about fashion and this is again, for me, it's been three months and it's a big learning for me is it's a category that demands and requires a lot of inspiration, right? And when you ask people and consumers about how they make their fashion choices, a very interesting starting point is what is my favorite celebrity wearing and what brands are he or she associated with. I have not seen this strong link between, you know, celebrities and a category as much as there is for fashion and that's where that match comes in. That's what the consumers are looking for. We will therefore use celebrities to kind of talk about what we have to offer. For example, in our latest campaign, Be Extraordinary Every Day, the insight was a very simple one. Indians everywhere said, I don't want to look my stylish best only on the big occasions. I want to look my stylish best every day. And for us to enable that and talk about branded daily fashion wear, you know, be kind of used Ranveer and Kiara and Vijay Devrakonda and Tamanna to bring out those stories for us. So that comes from a consumer need more than, you know, celebrity strategy, if I could say. So my second question was, what is your marketing mantra this week? What is that? What are the three main strategies that Mintra is going to use in order to, you know, maybe double the size of consumers that you're reaching? Yeah. So I think the good part is Mintra has been able to do this over the years. So I don't have to redefine things in that sense. What Mintra, the framework that Mintra uses is to continuously unlock more and more different growth opportunities, right? One example of the growth opportunity that I spoke about is branded daily fashion. How do I look stylish every day? And those are the kind of pieces that I think we will continuously be on the lookout for to figure out what works for different cohorts, what work for, you know, the Mintra versus the non-Mintra versus the Gen Z. Another example of, you know, a growth opportunity is workwear. Ever since this has opened up, obviously workwear has increased, but now there is a much more, you know, the workwear is much more casual than it ever was. And we are seeing like 100% growth on casual workwear than we've ever seen. So how do you tap into those opportunities? So for us, if there is a marketing mantra, it is to always be in sync with what the consumer is doing, because if we take the eye of the all there, then we're not going to be able to serve them. So that's the Uber piece. But outside of tapping the needs and wants, tapping into trends, be it social media related, be it commerce related, I really believe commerce and content as a large bucket is going to be the future, both from a fashion perspective or even otherwise. Gen Z and how do you build on them? Because again, big part of not just today, but future for each of these and how do we fashion and build up brands that way is what's important. As we do this on the fashion side, we also again got a learning that is not the big part of looking good is not only about what I wear, but also about what other products I use. So which is where the category comes in. And that's something that we've been kind of doubling down on in the recent months. And we've done a lot of work there, including a campaign there with and part of it is also something that we believe that across both fashion and beauty, we will Indians to look their stylish brand. Absolutely. Sundar, I had one or two questions more about understanding what the platform is doing. Is that in one of your interviews also, there was a very big conversation about peer to and tier three cities becoming like making 50% more than 50% of your business are not wrong. So and they have been hearing the Bharat region, specifically the Bharat region becoming the more of hotbeds or how do I see deep pocket regions when it comes to making business or when it comes to churning out the revenue from these regions. How are you seeing, how is fashion or the lifestyle segment seeing these two or these tier two, tier three cities as deeper pockets or as very important part of their consumer outreach and how are you going to capitalize more on them. Yeah, I think for Mintra, we've always had a very broad based approach to consumer cohorts across the country. We get more than 45% of our food tier three already. So big chunk and an important chunk for us already, not any current growth rates or not. We've always and for us, I think the mantra has always been what is important for them. Again, from a fashion style perspective, Indian and ethnic where also becomes more and more important over there. One classic example is through last year, we added between 30 to 50 case styles per month on Indian web. Just as much as we are seeing Gen Z grow and also in tier two, tier three, we're seeing Lengas grow by 60%. So that's the beauty of I think fashion that it's not about one specific trend. Everyone has a different persona of fashion depending on the content that they're in and what Mintra does is make sure that across categories and price points, we are able to match that. What we also need to kind of make sure that consumers have trust on is the post purchase pieces. Why? How soon will I get it? And if I get it, how do I make sure that if there is something wrong, how do I get in exchange for it? And those are pieces that I think we are quite honestly industry leading on. And that's enabled us to build trust amongst all consumer cohorts that when I buy something from Mintra, it will be something that I can use. So do you approach a different marketing strategy to reach out to these consumers hailing from tier two to three cities? So it gets customized to what each of them look for. If I had to loosely break it down to let's take an example of our influencer strategy that we spoke about sometime back. The influencers that I would use for Gen Z would probably be different from whom I would use for Ethnics, who I would use different for in the south versus the north because each of these is customized to the sense of fashion and beauty within those cohorts. So we customize it to that cohort. But the principle of providing them the widest and the deepest selection at the price points they want with the customer experience that they seek for remains our holy grail. That's something we will offer everyone. It just gets customized to their needs. Not only in terms of marketing approach, but even customized from an app experience. When you open the app and there is a customer sitting in Bareli versus someone sitting in Salem, they will see an interface that is customized to them basis their behavior in the past. And I think that part of it kind of is the biggest unlock that Mintra as a brand quite honestly does really, really well, which is why we get the kind of loyalty and engagement that we do. Absolutely, absolutely. Great insight about the dietary cities. I also wanted to understand, you know, Mintra has been very experimental when it comes to, you know, experimenting with the platform itself, be it, you know, consumers trying on clothes to try on glasses to, you know, get into AR, VR technology, or if I'm not wrong, better words also I think you have tried. So what are the new innovations you guys are working on in the future or maybe in the coming months that we are going to see? Yeah, I mean, I don't think I can comment about what's coming in the future, but I think we talk about at least our approach right now. I think it's very important for customers in this journey to be able to discover what they want. Big part of fashion is size and fit and how does it work? And we have a size fit algorithm that ensures that when you choose a t-shirt, for example, we will show up the size that is most suited for you based on your previous purchases. And that's a very important part of, you know, allowing a person to make sure it works for them. When someone looks at a social commerce like and sees, for example, an influencer or a model there wearing a certain shirt and they want to kind of like and they click on that shirt. Not only will we give them details of that shirt, but if they like the overall look of the model, including, you know, the jacket the person's wearing or the trousers that she's wearing, then we allow them to shop the whole look also. So these are parts of how technology is enabling and making the shopping process so much more simpler for them. On the beauty side, we have a couple of very interesting pieces. There is a AI based skin analyzer feature where you take a selfie and basis that, you know, it kind of analyzes your different skin tone and features and it throws up products and points that are beneficial for you. What we've seen are customers not only using as a feature, but also buying the brands and products and coming back and repeating those, which means that it's something that actually works for them. For us to build more and more of these So yeah, in the future, what are the technologies that you are going to experiment with? Is there something new that you're going to come up with? I wish I could talk about it, but the tech team keeps things so secretive that, you know, I don't even think I would know what they are. But I think what's important is that when we look at technology, it's about technology that people across the country can adopt. It needs to be things that are scalable and simple. Let's get image search and I think that's a real unlock. When we see people around us and we kind of like what they're wearing, or if you're leafing through, you know, something on social media or, you know, a magazine and you find something that your favorite celebrity is wearing, image search allows you to take a photo of that, put it up on the app, and we will automatically show you the products that match, right? It sounds very simple as a technology, but to me, something like this is so much more scalable and usable for people and we've seen evidence of it. So that part of it from a technology is important that not only does it provide a benefit, but it should be scalable in a format that works across the country. And that's really the focus on what's new, honestly. The minute I find out, I'll tell you. Okay, I just have two more questions to go. One is the talk of the hour. Women's Day is going to hit us on 8th of March and, you know, a lot of brands make this hooligan about, you know, Women's Day. They create offers around Women's Day, but then somewhere or the other, they sound really forced, you know, because they are just coming up with offers and that's a big day. And a lot of people have that problem also that, you know, Women's Day comes, so these So as a marketer, you know, with such an immense experience working with different brands and now working in a very elitist lifestyle platform, what is your suggestion to marketers or to brands out there to, you know, leverage such occasions, but at the same time, not sound too forcible or how do I say to, you know, hooligan about it. Got it. So a couple of points. So I'd like to point out that we are not an elitist platform, but we are a very mass platform for Indians all across in terms of what we provide from a fashion and beauty perspective. I think your point which you spoke about is about occasions, right? And there are many occasions you spoke about Women's Day, there are festivals in the country. There are many occasions that come up and occasions tend to become points of consumption with a lot of brands to pride on, right? And of course, there is a commercial angle to it. I think from a longer term perspective, the lens I would use is are these opportunities for the brand to be truly more and more inclusive, right? And if that is something you can leverage and provide and become as a brand, I think the brand becomes better, serves a better purpose and for the target audience that you're talking to, it's more important. So if let's take an example of Women's Day, it's not about making one brand video for that day, but it's about through the year, how can you make sure that as an audience, men, women, all kinds of other cohorts that we have in this country make sure that all of it is inclusive in the brand offering that you have. And if that is a, you know, the larger piece you do on specific occasions, sure, you can go put out the brand videos that you want to do. But I think as a brand builder, I would take the lesson of inclusivity away from it and build that into the philosophy of the brand. Yeah, absolutely. The point that you put forward about inclusivity, I think that is the talk of many of the brands out there, not just women, I think when it comes to other genders like the LGBTQIA++, there's a lot of talks about that as well. But coming back to the conversation that we're having, my last question is about what is going to be the focus of this year when it comes to the marketing spends by the company? So a lot of people are talking about digital taking the lead versus TV still being behind, whereas a lot of marketers are talking about TV still leading the way and digital is following the footsteps. So what is your like, how is your platform going to be when it comes to that? And what is your bifurcation of marketing as well as advertising spends people throw some light on? Sure. Yeah. I think as an investment decision, that's something that's always looked at, right? That where you kind of spend your money for it to be the most effective. And it goes back to, again, the consumer cohort, right? What will allow you as a brand to make an impact on that target audience? There are certain cohorts in the country where TV will make more sense for the brand in one specific part of their life journey. In other places where your customer cohort spends inordinate amount of time only on digital, then only a digital strategy over there. So I don't think it's about making choices between one versus the other. It will boil down to who are you reaching and therefore that automatically enables you to make that choice. If a brand is unclear about who they are going after, then it becomes a question of grappling A versus B. But I think when there is clarity of this is the cohort, this is what they require. So the brand is able to provide a solution for them. It's quite simple to break down the mediums that we need to use to reach them and make choice. So yes, we use TV. We can influence us. We do. So we'll come us on the app. Yes, we do. So we use notifications on our app. Yes, we do. But this is to different consumer cohorts, different customers that they are in their engagement cycle with us. Absolutely. So you're going to be using TV or digital mode this year? As I said, there will be cohorts where I will use TG mode. There will be cohorts. Let's take Gen Z as an example. I will use digital mode for Gen Z. Within digital, you can break it down to influencers versus your pushed video. And there again, you will see your certain cohorts come out where digital video makes more sense or your ability to reach them is simple versus some other cohorts where influencers are better. So it does get customized to each of them. To each cohort, we will have to make these choices. Absolutely. Okay, coming back. So what is going to be the year for mantra and what is going to be the mantra of mantra? So I think for us, the mantra is make more and more consumers in the country be their fashionable best. That's important for us. It is a journey that we are on. Consumers want to buy more and more branded fashion, and I think therefore it is our duty to help serve that to them. I think that's the larger piece. Within that, we will unlock some of these pieces. As I said, international brands is big. Consumers want a large job to kind of deliver that to them. Athleisure is big job to do that. Finding personalized beauty is big and is an ask from them. It's our job to do that. Give it to them at the price points they want. Again, those are the pieces that I think are the larger jobs to be done to make sure that again, in the end of the day for them to feel comfortable making the choices that they are to look their stylish best. Absolutely. Thank you very much Sundar for taking out time and thank you very much everyone who's watching the video to the end of it. I would like to say all the best for the coming year and it was a pleasure talking to you. Have a great day. Thank you so much. Tanjila, both to you and to all your viewers. May we just say we look forward to welcoming all of you on the Mintra app and kind of allowing us to enable you to look your stylish best. Thank you so much for chatting with Mintra. Thank you. Have a great day Sundar. Bye bye. Bye bye.