Myntra aims to double sales, turn profitable by March'18

Narayanan said that the company saw its growth rate falling to 50 per cent year-on-year in the days that followed the government's announcement of scrapping old Rs 500 and 1,000 notes.

New Delhi, Jan 1: Flipkart-owned Myntra is aiming to become profitable by March 2018, helped by a combination of rationalising costs, cutting discounts and introducing more private labels.

The online fashion retailer, which has crossed a revenue run rate of USD 1 billion, also expects to double the number to over USD 2 billion during this fiscal. "...We crossed a billion dollar run rate this year, we want to cross a USD 2 billion run rate by 2018 March...we want to be not just unit economic positive but overall profitability.

We want to exit the next year with EBIDTA zero January-March 2018," Myntra Chief Executive Officer Ananth Narayanan told PTI. He added that another focus area for the company this year will be to provide more personalised services to customers.

"We are focusing on four things -- continue to reduce discounting, continue to ramp up private labels, reduce supply chain costs and increase consumer engagement. These are things that will help us achieve our targets," he said. Myntra, which bought its rival Jabong in July last year from Rocket Internet for USD 70 million, expects its growth rate to be almost 80 per cent year-on-year, despite demonetisation.

Narayanan said that the company saw its growth rate falling to 50 per cent year-on-year in the days that followed the government's announcement of scrapping old Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. "We did not de-grow but our growth rates fell from almost 100 per cent to 50 per cent y-o-y. We expect to return to 90-100 per cent growth rates in the coming month," he added.

PTI