Walmart's Myntra leans on Virat Kohli, Anushka Sharma to reach 100 mn users

Duo named company's first official brand ambassadors; over 50% of Myntra's customers are coming from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities

Walmart-owned Myntra has roped in Indian captain Virat Kohli and Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma as the online fashion company’s first official brand ambassadors. The duo would help the company launch a brand campaign for shopping on the firm’s e-commerce platform. This is the largest ever brand campaign for Myntra where it is targeting to reach over 100 million potential customers, said the company.

Myntra said the campaign was inspired by the company’s vision to offer an enriching online shopping experience for fashion and provide a user experience with hi-tech features that go beyond the act of adding items to a cart. This campaign strings together various features like visual search- that allows users to click a picture of any merchandise and search for it on the Myntra platform. There are other features such as ‘Sneaker Store’ that allows for relevant category and ‘Try and Buy’ which enables users to physically try out multiple clothes before make the final purchase.

“The association of Bollywood and Sports with fashion needs no introduction and hence having Virat (Kohli) and Anushka (Sharma)  as the face of this new campaign will enable us to build strong brand salience and establish the joy and convenience of shopping on Myntra,” said Amar Nagaram, Head, Myntra-Jabong. “Technology is enabling us to understand consumers and their fashion needs... which have been highlighted vividly in this new campaign,” added Nagaram.

Myntra services over 19,000 pin codes across the country. The company said it has partnered with over 2000 leading fashion and lifestyle brands such as Nike, Puma, Harley Davidson, and Ferrari. Over 50% of Myntra’s customers are now coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities such as Bhubaneswar, Trichy, Coimbatore, Kanpur, Raipur and Indore. Myntra also said that region like North East  is historically a fashion forward market and hence an important market for the company.

Interestingly Judith McKenna, president and chief executive officer of Walmart International is in Bengaluru this week  to assess the progress made by Myntra since the acquisition of the company’s parent Flipkart last May for $16 billion. She had said that one of the things Walmart had planned, once the transaction of Flipkart was completed was to get Myntra products to other countries. This included plans to get Myntra products to Canada in 6-9 months. But she said, “Myntra was able to do it in two months and taught Walmart how to do it,” said a person familiar with McKenna’s conversation with the Myntra team. According to sources, she had also said that Myntra has huge opportunity to get fashion to the forefront for customers and solve their problems. “Your ability to solve problem is fantastic,” she had said, according to the person.