E-commerce firms scale up tech efforts for upcoming festive season

Online retailers, startups are scaling up their tech and innovation efforts to handle demand from shoppers during festive season and make their shopping and payment experience seamless

E-commerce firms and startups are enhancing their technology and innovation to manage increased demand during the upcoming festive season. Their focus is on streamlining the shopping and payment experiences for consumers.

Online fashion retailer Myntra has introduced Maya, a conversational AI-powered chatbot. Launched just ahead of Myntra's annual Big Fashion Festival (BFF), Maya aims to assist users in navigating through the platform's vast range of styles, answering their specific and more complex queries while being contextually aware. "As the festive season kicks in, we eagerly look forward to our customers engaging with Maya, with the confidence that their quest for finding the perfect fashion and lifestyle needs will be met with enhanced convenience," said Raghu Krishnananda, chief product and technology officer at Myntra.

Maya is adept at understanding customers' specific needs and offers relevant product suggestions from a pool of 2.3 million styles across various categories such as fashion, beauty, footwear, and home items listed on Myntra. For example, Maya can help a customer looking for a gift by asking follow-up questions, thereby streamlining the query to then smartly curate product choices in line with the customer's specific request. With this new feature, the company expects more than 20 per cent of its user base to interact with Maya in the coming months.

This year, Myntra has also rolled out a comprehensive suite of AI-powered technological features like My Stylist and MyFashionGPT. MyFashionGPT allows customers to search for a specific fashion product by typing text in a manner resembling natural speech. The company expects to serve over 8 million customers during the Big Fashion Festival. To handle this anticipated surge in traffic, Myntra has prepared its systems to manage about 1 million concurrent users.

Flipkart is also preparing for its annual flagship event, The Big Billion Days, with its own technological interventions. Among them is an AI-powered conversational assistant, 'Flippi', which will replicate the in-store experience with expert guidance and a simplified shopping process. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer at Flipkart Group, said, "The Big Billion Days this year is special for the entire ecosystem, highlighting the power of e-commerce in fostering growth and delivering value to millions of customers."

Flipkart is introducing an interactive short-video browsing experience, 'Vibes', and a one-to-one video assistance feature, enabling customers to have real-time video interactions for personalised recommendations. Flipkart has also integrated augmented reality and virtual reality features to enhance the shopping experience.

SoftBank-backed e-commerce firm Meesho is focusing on its strategic expansion by offering an array of branded products through 'Meesho Mall' this festive season. The company aims to help digitalise the businesses of small merchants and regional brands. Meesho emphasised that technology, especially AI, will continue to be a focus area, driving innovation and fostering a cycle of recurring orders.

According to a report by Redseer Strategy Consultants, e-commerce retailers are projected to achieve sales of Rs 90,000 crore during this festive season, which would be an 18 to 20 per cent increase compared to last year.