Inside the rise of an e-commerce giant in India

Over the years, India has emerged not only as a manufacturing powerhouse but also one of the largest e-commerce markets globally.

As of 2024, India’s e-retail market was estimated at about $60 billion, per Bain, with its market value projected to reach $325 billion by 2030.

At the center of this success are online retailers like Myntra, which was acquired by local e-comm giant Flipkart in 2014. Per an Economic Times report, the retailer’s net profit skyrocketed nearly 18x to 548 crore (~$62 million) from 31 crore the previous year. Meanwhile, operating revenue rose 18% to 6,043 crore (~$687 million).

Sunder Balasubramanian, CMO at Myntra—which sells everything from apparel to beauty, home, and tech—believes many factors have formed the backbone of the online boom. They include widespread internet and smartphone usage at low prices and by extension, more access.

“This really allowed the mobile phone to become an access point like nothing else before for the consumer at large in the country, and that is the trend on which e-commerce piggybacked,” Balasubramanian told Retail Brew.

He added that as a large country with more than 600,000 villages, before mobile became ubiquitous, “most of the point of access is related to the physical retail shops…if you wanted any of the larger brands, you had to travel to the bigger cities.”

E-commerce, per Balasubramanian, “broke that barrier” by facilitating direct reach to both Indian and global brands, but also smaller niche labels.

Currently, Myntra partners with thousands of Indian and international brands across categories including Mango, H&M, Nike, and L’Oréal as it continues to grow and add more retailers to its portfolio.

The company attributes a lot of its growth to not just its affluent customers in bigger cities but also smaller cities (termed Tier 1, 2 and 3) and towns across the country.

Balasubramanian explained that although Myntra operated at a “mid-premium” pricing level, which limited its selection to affluent cohorts, “as adoption grew…we are right now seeing almost 50% of our user base and revenue coming out of metro or the Tier 1 cities, versus the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities,” he said, adding that “40%–45% of the demand for international brands comes from the non metros or the smaller towns itself, because aspirational premiumization is happening across the country.”

Beyond geographical reach, the retailer was initially more “women-focused,” but it’s also seeing increasing interest from men. “Now we have 50% women, 50% men, kind of a focus,” Balasubramaniun said.

A key piece to its evolving consumer has also been younger millennials and Gen Z, per the company. Currently, 40% of Myntra’s user base is Gen Z.

To further accelerate the connection with the younger generation, the company has also introduced GlamStream—a content commerce platform, with 350K monthly active creators and 3.5 million shopper-creators (66% of which are Gen Z). According to the company, it has been a significant generator with its social commerce now contributing 10% of the platform’s revenue— with a 50% increase in contribution in the past 4 months.

For the digitally native generation, it has been a hit, as has Myntra’s beauty category with more than 4,000 brands including MAC, Clinique, Estée Lauder, and Huda Beauty.

“Over the past few years, we are growing at about 2x of the online beauty market, so it’s been a really good growth driver for us,” Balasubramaniun said.

And as he looks to the future, the company will continue to bet on Gen Z. Currently, Myntra has more than 20 million Gen Z customers—a number that has doubled YoY.

“There are going to be close to 200 million Gen Z who will be transacting online, and we want to lead that way in being the brand of choice for Gen Z,” he said. “In 5–10 years from now, Gen Z will be the biggest chunk of our business.”