Snapdeal.com acquires premium fashion portal Exclusively.com

Online shopping portal Snapdeal.com has acquired premium and luxury fashion site Exclusively.com, a company statement by the former said here Wednesday.

With this acquisition, Snapdeal.com looks to further strengthen its fashion business and reach $2 billion in gross merchandise value in the fashion category this year. However, the company declined to disclose the deal size.

Currently the fashion business contributes to over 60 percent of the volumes of orders at Snapdeal.

"Under this partnership, Exclusively will complement Snapdeal's existing ecosystem and will provide a consolidated offering for the luxury and lifestyle shopper, making it India's first online luxury mall," the statement said.

Luxury products and services is a $14 billion market in India, growing at 30 percent year-on-year, according to a recent KPMG-ASSOCHAM report.

"We have witnessed a surge in the demand from consumers across the country for premium and luxury products, however, given that access to luxury brands is severely limited in our country, we have brought Exclusively into our family to provide our 40 million+ users the access to widest range of aspirational, high end products and services," Kunal Bahl, co-founder & chief executive officer, Snapdeal.com said.

At present, Exclusively.com retails hundreds of India's leading designers on its site, including - Manish Malhotra, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Arora, Anita Dongre, Rohit Bal, Gaurav Gupta, JJ Valaya, Ritu Kumar, Varun Bahl, Shivan & Narresh and Neeta Lulla.

"With increased awareness and growing disposable incomes, premium and luxury consumption in India is seeing a significant upward trend. With the geographical limitations of the brick-and-mortar model, we strongly believe that the luxury and premium segments can only be grown by sharing access with the consumer," Sunjay Guleria and Mohini Boparai-Guleria, co-founders of Exclusively said.