Raghu Krishnananda, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Myntra on how the main on-line style vacation spot makes use of know-how to function, differentiate and innovate

New Delhi: With virtually three a long time of expertise, Raghu Krishnananda is a know-how chief with expertise in driving product improvement and innovation. As the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Myntra, Krishnananda oversees the strategic path and execution of know-how initiatives, taking part in a pivotal position in shaping the corporate’s digital transformation.

Before Myntra, Raghu held senior positions at Yahoo, Samsung, Wipro, Goldman Sachs and different firms the place he led large-scale initiatives and product engineering groups, delivering cutting-edge options that drove enterprise progress.

In his present position on the Flipkart-owned Bengaluru-based style, magnificence and way of life e-commerce firm, Myntra, Raghu leads a crew of over 600 engineers throughout retail and partnerships, storefront, provide chain, platform companies, knowledge science, safety, DevOps and IT.

The scope of Krishnananda’s work is expansive: The style, magnificence and way of life e-commerce vacation spot hosts over 2.3 million types spanning males’s, ladies’s, and youngsters’ attire in addition to magnificence and private care, footwear, baggage, journey & equipment, watches & wearables and residential classes.

It serves over 19,000 pin codes nationwide and on a median clocks greater than 55 million month-to-month customers. It can also be the associate of selection for over 6,000 home and worldwide manufacturers in addition to works with ecosystem companions together with supply companions and over 10,000 artisans.

According to main enterprise info and analytics platform Tofler, Myntra’s working income grew 25% to Rs 4,375 crore within the monetary yr ended March 31, 2023. The agency had reported Rs 3,501 crore in working income within the earlier fiscal yr.

Being a digital-first firm, know-how is core to Myntra’s enterprise. And It is Raghu’s duty to make sure that the tech-led improvements are on the forefront of offering a superlative buying expertise to Myntra prospects.

In an unique interplay with IndiaRetailing, Krishnananda offers insights into how Myntra makes use of know-how to offer a differentiated and progressive buying journey.

Edited Excerpts

How has been your journey with Myntra?

It has been a improbable expertise of pushing the boundaries to raise buyer experiences. We have a tremendous crew of people who’re keen about constructing progressive, high-performing and scalable options. There are a number of new capabilities and industry-first options that we’ve been in a position to ship over the past 4 years.

We make fixed improvements to allow the simple discovery of merchandise whereas additionally offering personalised help. We launched curated app-in-app experiences resembling FWD for our GenZ prospects, Luxe for our prospects searching for luxurious merchandise or Beauty for patrons searching for magnificence and private care merchandise. We have additionally launched a number of personalised suggestion widgets by way of the buying funnel to assist customers uncover related merchandise.

We launched our social commerce proposition, with the primary content-led commerce options within the nation and revamped our associate portal to offer wealthy dashboards and insights. We additionally launched M-Express to ship merchandise in two days to our metro prospects.

How do you utilize know-how to supply differentiated experiences?

Our capability to determine international tendencies swiftly has allowed us to cater to the ever-evolving tastes of our fashion-conscious buying cohorts. Moreover, our integration of latest companions and merchandise onto our platform ensures a various choice for our customers.

Additionally, we’ve invested in creating immersive and differentiated experiences, setting new requirements for excellence in e-commerce buying. Beyond the acquisition journey, we’re dedicated to offering stellar post-purchase experiences, characterised by expedited supply and top-notch buyer care.

In addition, there are immersive experiences resembling digital try-on to assist customers visualise the merchandise on themselves. Another related personalised expertise that we’ve launched is a pores and skin analyzer to suggest private care merchandise appropriate to a person’s pores and skin situation.

True to our mission of democratising style by way of know-how, we launched MyStylist to offer a private stylist expertise by recommending full appears to be like for customers primarily based on merchandise that they’ve already purchased or browsed. Most of those options use AI. Most just lately, we’ve been the pioneers in introducing GenAI-based options resembling MyFashionGPT and Maya giving our prospects new methods to buy on our platform.

You added 75 million new app customers in 2023. What do attribute this rise to?

In addition to scaling up our choice with top-notch types from main international manufacturers, on the tech entrance, 2023 noticed us introduce the vernacular search function, catering particularly to our non-metro prospects. Launched to accommodate linguistic variety throughout India, we launched this function after recognizing that many shoppers are extra snug buying on Myntra utilizing their native language to seek for merchandise. This function helps queries in 10 regional languages, along with Hindi and Hinglish, making the buying expertise extra inclusive and accessible.

Over 4-5% of the queries on our platform are presently by way of the Vernacular Search function, with ~40% of customers coming from non-metros. We have been witnessing important enchancment each in question abandonment charges, and person conversion.

We additionally rolled out Myntra Minis, a short-form video content material providing impressed by Instagram’s Reels. We seamlessly built-in these movies into the buying journey to supply precious style inspiration. The success of this initiative is obvious in the truth that we clock over one million video views day by day and roughly 2500 movies get added month-to-month.

What’s really outstanding is the excessive engagement charge of about 40%, surpassing even the preferred social media platforms. This might be attributed to the tutorial and entertaining nature of our content material.

Today, we aren’t only a buying vacation spot; it’s a dynamic platform the place prospects immerse themselves in style tendencies, studying about styling and pairing. These options signify our dedication to constantly enhancing the buying expertise, guaranteeing it stays participating, informative, and pleasant for all.

What’s your stand on AI?

At Myntra, we leverage applied sciences that assist us cater to the evolving wants of the shoppers. From that perspective, we’ve been utilizing AI for over seven years now and leveraging AI has helped us improve buyer expertise in some ways. For that cause, we are going to proceed to deal with this know-how.

What’s new on the fee aspect?

UPI has been an enormous recreation changer for funds within the nation. We have integrations with key gamers for pre-payment in addition to Cash on Delivery choices. We see growing adoption of purchase now pay later and have built-in with companions together with Simpl to allow this selection to prospects.

We partnered with Kotak Bank to introduce the Myntra Co-branded bank card, which affords further advantages for our prospects. On the expertise aspect, we launched the delayed on-line fee possibility function permitting customers to lock of their purchases even when there’s a failure within the pre-payment possibility by changing it to COD and permitting them the choice to alter the fee possibility later.

What was the thought behind the FWD style portal?

Gen-Z immediately is the defining voice on the place style and wonder, and general tech, is headed. They are an necessary cohort to us and play an enormous affect in how we’re shaping our initiatives. Said to be born with smartphones of their palms, they’re continually looking for extra immersive experiences in addition to newer tendencies.

Myntra FWD stands out as a particular and immersive in-app buying expertise tailor-made particularly for GenZ, addressing their distinctive wants and expectations. With a deal with unlocking inspiration, discoverability, and entry to the newest international style tendencies, FWD affords a trend-first choice, that includes over 1 lakh types from over 700 manufacturers and 2500+
weekly drops. It additionally has a related Mini video from influencers to assist present style inspiration to those customers.

Tell us about your omnichannel operations.

As a part of our omnichannel technology, we’ve over 350 manufacturers and 5,600 shops in our community throughout greater than 140 cities. Myntra’s efforts with omnichannel know-how allow prospects to get orders delivered from the closest retailer, crunching the supply time considerably. Brands leveraging this know-how can checklist choices from their shops, giving prospects a lot wider choices.

Some notable international manufacturers included in our omnichannel community are Mango, Vero Moda, Jack & Jones, USPA, Fila, Vans, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein, in addition to luxurious retailers like Collective and Iconic.

We have additionally been pioneering initiatives like Beyond Borders and omnichannel enablement to make worldwide manufacturers and tendencies extra accessible to our prospects by way of technology-driven options.

What’s new in AR/VR?

The know-how is related for Myntra and can proceed to grow to be more and more in style, permitting consumers to strive on garments just about earlier than they purchase them.

We have this try-on function obtainable for each attire in addition to magnificence merchandise, enhancing the end-to-end buying journey, which has led to a 1.5X enhance in consideration and a 2X increase in conversion for Makeup class types final yr. Myntra’s dedication to technological development extends to AI instruments like Skin Analyzer and Product Finder, simplifying and personalising the buying expertise.

What is Myntra’s method to know-how?

The position of know-how within the ever-evolving style and wonder panorama is to not solely allow entry but additionally do it in a means that caters to the distinctive wants of each particular person and makes the entire buying journey as easy and seamless for them.

Brands that may leverage know-how to the fullest will be capable of drive the market and keep forward of the curve. Technology has been a real differentiator for Myntra, serving to us construct buyer loyalty in a means that we’re in a position to lengthen an elevated buyer expertise, providing them a seamless buying journey.

In 2023, we continued our mission to democratise style by way of know-how by introducing progressive options that assisted customers to present them an unparalleled buying journey. Features we provide have considerably expanded Myntra’s tech-enabled choices, solidifying our place as one of many leaders on this house and strengthening our dedication to providing an unmatched buying expertise.

Which applied sciences will form the long run?

The main technological transformations that may form the way forward for the style {industry} can be:

AI and Gen AI: With GenAI becoming mainstream, we are going to see this pattern accelerating. Some of the potential use circumstances are the usage of LLMs for question and intent understanding, the usage of GenAI for style design to assist designers, serving to buyer care brokers with sooner concern decision and the automation of creatives for merchandising and notifications

Immersive Shopping Experiences pushed by AR/VR – VTR: This will assist assured and knowledgeable decision-making and permit prospects to experiment with completely different types and tendencies.

Blockchain – Trust Building: We may even see the growing use of blockchain know-how to offer visibility to customers on the whole manufacturing journey of the product.