Fashionara launches e-marketplace ‘flea bazaar’ to expand portfolio and profits

BANGALORE: Women-focused fashion portal Fashionara has launched ‘ flea bazaar’, an e-marketplace where consumers can buy a host of quirky products from apparel to notepads showcased by local shops and boutique stores. The move, aimed at expanding portfolio, reach and profits, clubs Bangalore-based Fashionara with online retailers Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong.

In an e-marketplace, the company does not stock inventory but links sellers and buyers. Top domestic e-commerce players including Flipkart and Amazon are betting on fashion as their fastest growing category since the margins offered in the business are the highest.

“With our flea marketplace, we want to get the experience of street shopping on Janpath, Delhi, or Linking Road, Mumbai, to come online,” said Arun Sirdeshmukh, chief executive of Fashionara, which is backed by Helion Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.


The portal, which expects to sign up about 500 vendors this year, will, however, continue to sell popular brands like Biba and Free Culture in an inventory-led model, Fashionara's Sirdeshmukh added. Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail advisory firm Technopak, said, “There is no risk of inventory-related costs. There is more choice for customers and little or no working capital requirement in the marketplace model, which makes it a good opportunity.”

In India, the marketplace model gained traction after the world's largest online retailer, Seattlebased Amazon, entered the country last year. While companies including Myntra and Jabong have tweaked their business models from being completely inventory led to a hybrid one, mainly to get access to foreign direct investment (FDI), which is currently not allowed in direct online retail, other retailers including Limeroad launched its business with the marketplace approach.

“Once you buy inventory you will always try to sell what is in your warehouse the longest, instead of showing the newest trends or collections,” said Suchi Mukherjee, Founder and CEO, Limeroad, adding that the social platform is on track to reach the Rs 100 crore revenue mark in one year. Mukherjee said that in women’s apparel, there are a few recognized brands that have national reach. “To showcase the diversity in a profitable manner, the marketplace model is more feasible than inventory.”

Experts, however, say that if not managed well, the marketplace model can confuse shoppers too. “The downside of this (marketplace) is that consumers get very confused when you have hundreds and thousands of merchandise and brands to choose from,” Technopak’s Singhal said.

Retailers agree. “The concern with marketplace is ensuring that customer experience is not compromised,” said Praveen Sinha, managing director of Germany's Rocket Internet-backed Jabong. abong, which generates sales of around $30 million per month, gets more than 35% of its sales from the marketplace.