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Smart Social Media
Marketing Drives Millennial Businesses
Consumer
connect is a common thread binding these brands.
When
Pratiksha Tewari, a young child psychologist in Delhi, wanted to wear
something different for her friend's wedding, she checked out Instagram and
settled on a beaded necklace embellished with silver bells of NakhreWaali, an
online designer jewellery store.
“It worked for me because of the
novelty pitch,“ said Tewari, adding that she cannot find such things at
regular online portals.“A lot of this stuff is sold on Instagram and small
sellers often make customised stuff, which is good for people who like
personalised things,“ she said.
NakhreWaali is one of the numerous
budding online businesses running largely on the foundation of social media
marketing in the country.
Startups such as NakhreWaali,
Vajor.com and Prerto bet on unique, handcrafted fashion products that they
showcase on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest,
creating a niche market away from big ecommerce marketplaces.
“Fashion consumers in India want
pieces that are unique, with a story,“ said Antalya Varma, fashion analyst
from The Institute of Apparel Management (IAM), Gurgaon.
She expects such niche brands to steadily
create a market for themselves, riding on the exclusivity factor. “These
brands provide a healthy balance in the market for fashion enthusiasts and
consumers,“ Varma said.
Most these startups were founded on
shoestring budgets and are run without external funding.
NakhreWaali, for example, was started
on a budget of just Rs 1.5 lakh. “We started off with our own funds,“ said
Gursakhi Lugani, its 24-year-old founder. “Whatever savings I had from my
corporate job and some that I had earned from my work as a creative head for
an online fashion magazine was put into this business,“ she said.
Lugani never had any formal education
in fashion. “A friend of mine and I happened to attend fashion week, and we
decided to customise our earrings for the event. The compliments we received
made me think about turning this into a business. We took the plunge and
NakhreWaali happened,“ she said.
Founded early last year, NakhreWaali
is already one of the most popular shops of its kind, having earned Rs 25
lakh in the last six months. Bollywood actors Parineeti Chopra and Swetha
Tripathi, comedian Mallika Dua, and TV personality Miss Malini are among its
clientele.
Lugani attributes her success to
social media. “We've never sold anywhere except online,“ she said. “No one would
know NakhreWaali if it wasn't for Facebook, Instagram and the likes we
receive.“
These businesses have flourished
greatly on the back of smart, eye-popping marketing on social media where
people across the world have access to collections, styles, colours, and
prices of their products. Sure enough, many brands are now popular in markets
outside India too.
“A large majority of our customers
are from India, the UK, US, and UAE,“ said Prerna Agarwal, founder of
Mumbai-based handcrafted jewellery brand Prerto. “We also have stockist in
New Zealand, Africa, Canada, Singapore and several other countries across the
globe.“
Agarwal, who has selectively opened
the brand to a few fashion shows and exclusive multi-designer stores, said
she has now managed to start another online business two months ago with her
earnings from Prerto.
Apurva Lama, director of apparel
brand Appycat Street, said she owed her business to social media marketing.
“Instagram alone drives half of our traffic,“ she said. “We've had sales from
Kashmir to Kanyakumari. We've reached corners of India that we hadn't heard
of and have built a steady international customer base with a number of sales
in the US, UK, Dubai and Australia,“ she said.
NakhreWaali has built partnerships
with entities in Dubai and Milan to enhance sales in those cities and plan to
add more to the list very soon.
Consumer connect is a common thread
binding these brands.
Brands like Appycat Street and online
designer apparel and jewellery store Vajor.com have collaborated with social
media influencers like fashion bloggers and models who widen the market
further for them.
Natasha AR Kumar, founder of Vajor,
said the brand placed high value in content development and has worked with
lifestyle and fashion bloggers as well as people from different walks of
life.
“We have a section on our blog called
Vajor Muse where we feature intriguing and inspiring women who are
travellers, writers, environmentalists, artists who are doing all of this
aside from their day to day jobs,“ she said. Started in 2014 without any
external funding, Vajor has been growing at an annual rate of 200%, Kumar
said.
Appycat Street have had Instagram
stars and lifestyle and fashion bloggers Komal Pandey (College Couture), Nilu
Yuleena Thapa (Big Hair Loud Mouth), and Dolly Singh (Spill that Sass) help
them reach a wider audience.
However, despite their success and
popularity, many of these startups are facing some difficulty due to lack of
funds.
Himani Singh, founder of online
beauty store Ayca, said that being self-funded has made it sacrifice on
things like customised packaging, which required huge volumes and cash flow.
Singh and her business partner Mallyeka Watsa started Ayca by investing Rs 5
lakh from their savings. The brand's turnover in the past six months has been
around Rs 20 lakh and it has Bollywood actor Harshvardhan Kapoor among its
clients.
According to Varma of IAM, these
brands understand their customers inside out and provide them with exactly
what they require.“India is an aggressive market, and with time competition
is only going to increase,“ she said. “These brands need to focus on what
they bring on additionally to the table other than their basic products,
through their brand image, sales and service.“ Surbhi Gupta, an MBA student
from Pune, said she was an avid online shopper and she had started purchasing
products exclu hasing products exclusively from smaller, cus tomised websites
rath er than the big guns like Myntra, Jabong and Koovs. “The big websites
offer mainstream stuff to their customers -things can be found in any mall,“
she said. “There are so many smaller websites to choose from here, and the
stuff they sell is pretty affordable since we know where and how most of them
are being made.“
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Bhagyashree
Nair & Nishtha Saluja
ET12AUG17
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