Myntra turns to AI to drive growth and profitability

In a bid to boost growth and profitability, Flipkart owned fashion and lifestyle marketplace Myntra is betting on Artificial Intelligence to enhance and personalize consumer experience.

As India's e-commerce market is forecast to grow to $188 billion in a decade with more and more of its 1.2 billion people logging on to smartphones and PCs in the world's fastest-growing internet services market, Myntra’s head of product, Ambarish Kenghe believes that staying strong and firm on the ground will be crucial for a better future.

“This is a little bit like a (cricket) test match – you stay on the pitch and the runs will come. Create great consumer experiences and things will move,” Kenghe said while speaking with Reuters.

Bengaluru-based Myntra, which was acquired by Flipkart in 2014, is using customer data to create personalized stores, and curating clothing lines based on fashion trends. "We are investing a lot in machine learning and AI," said Ajit Narayanan, Myntra's chief technology officer.

The company will also launch a mobile app-based chat support service next week, that will let users and brands interact with each other, thus helping personalize the shopping experience for shoppers.

The fashion portal hopes that by making the shopping experience better and by deploying the power of AI to offer customers what they actually want, it will be able to boost revenue.

Most innovation will trickle down from the app to the desktop as the mobile phone is the firm's primary business channel, contributing about 80-85 percent to revenues, Narayanan said.

Myntra executives said the company expects to turn profitable next year and was aiming to double its annualized gross merchandise value (GMV) to $2 billion by March 2018, from an annualized $1 billion currently.

This recent move to leverage technology to boost growth instead of discount culture in the e-commerce sector surely bodes well for the maturing startups of India.