Tata Digital: Tata Digital sews ‘value fashion’ under its Cliq brand

Tata Digital, the e-commerce arm of Tata Group, is working on creating a “fashion at an attractive price” offering through its fashion and lifestyle marketplace Tata Cliq, in a bid to challenge bigger rivals such as Flipkart, Amazon India and Reliance Ajio, according to multiple people familiar with the project.Cliq, which has a mass-affluent footprint, is in talks with several brands to increase its value-for-money offerings, they said. Mass-affluent refers to a group of consumers who are willing to spend more money on fashion and accessories. Cliq is unlikely to create a separate brand for value-for-money fashion, but will partner with global and Indian brands to match the broad offerings of Flipkart, Amazon and Walmart-owned Reliance, they added.

“They (Tatas) have made several proposals — including (at the time) the old team led by former CEO Pratik Pal — to build a good value fashion offering,” said a person familiar with the matter. “Global brands from Canada and France have also been shortlisted as meeting the requirements. To compete with Flipkart and Reliance, they need to expand their offerings and that’s why work is underway.”

Tata Group owns popular apparel chain Zudio, but the retail brand will be available offline only and there are no immediate plans to bring it to Tata Digital’s Neu super app, the people mentioned above said.

Zudio – led by Noel Tata – has crossed revenues of Rs 7,000 crore in fiscal 2024, marking yet another year of significant growth.

An email sent to Tata Digital did not elicit any response till Wednesday when the newspaper went to press.

Cliq was incorporated into Tata Digital last year as part of a restructuring to consolidate the steel and salt group’s core e-commerce businesses.

People briefed on the matter said Tatas were also considering opening a home goods store to expand their fashion business as the draft e-commerce policy takes a back seat.

“Flipkart has its own fashion game apart from Myntra focusing on premium segments, and Reliance has a clear advantage over international brands. There is a thinking that Cliq is mass affluent and needs to offer more,” said another person aware of the matter.

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Myntra reported gross sales of around $3.9 billion in FY2023, while Reliance Ajio crossed $2 billion, ET reported earlier. Tata Cliq is trying to close the gap with the market leaders.

“Zudio will not appear on the network and that is clear – at least in the foreseeable future,” said the person quoted above.

Apart from the value play at Cliq, the fashion vertical is one of the key areas of focus for super app Neu, ET reported earlier. Grocer BigBasket and e-pharmacy 1mg are two other big businesses at Neu.

“Group brand integrations take longer than they should, but with Cliq under Tata Digital, the collaboration has been relatively easier… hence (Tata Cliq) CEO Gopal Asthana has been working closely with the sales team at Neu,” said a person with direct knowledge of the internal dynamics of the company.

On May 20, ET reported that Tata Digital’s new CEO Naveen Tahilyani had reorganized the management team of super app Neu following the departure of several senior executives.

According to an internal memo by Tahilyani, most of the management positions at Tata Digital have already been filled by existing team members.