B School Case Study Challenge

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Contents
Indian Fashion e-commerce Landscape .................................................................................................. 3
About abof.com ...................................................................................................................................... 4
How is the abof different with respect to consumer experience? ......................................................... 4
Comparison with competitors ................................................................................................................ 7
Questions ................................................................................................................................................ 8
Appendix 1: List of Partner Brands on abof.com .................................................................................... 9

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Indian Fashion e-commerce Landscape

Back in 2014, Aditya Birla Group evaluated e-commerce space basis global and Indian experience. ECommerce market in India is expected to be about $70 billion by 2020, out of which online fashion
will contribute 30% of this market.
Some key facts related to the online fashion industry:
Online apparel sales set to grow 4 times by 2020
Every third shopping search on Google is fashion-related
Google search queries on fashion are growing at 66 per cent year-on-year.
By 2020, internet user-base and smart phone penetration is expected to be 700 million
The Group could no longer ignore the potential of millennials shopping online and hence the decision
to make a greenfield, organic foray through abof.com. It is an online fashion store, offering shoppers
brands from both the Aditya Birla Group and other companies in addition to its Own Brand under the
name abof. abof.com was launched in September 2015. We are one of the fastest concept to launch
online company. Currently we are 3rd largest pure-play ecommerce player in India.
We are in the online business, wherein our products are displayed on our website along with the key
information / description. A customer accesses the product, chooses the ones suitable to her / his
requirements / tastes and places the order online, wherein she / he can either pay via Debit Card,
Credit Card, Online Wallets or opt for Cash On Delivery. Once the order is placed, the product is picked,
packed and shipped from our warehouse to the customer via our courier partners. The same gets
delivered as per the turn-around-time (depending on the delivery location).
In an industry known for deep discounts and wide range, we are trying to create a niche for ourselves
by creating a business model based on user experience, differentiation of features for customers and
curated merchandise range. Hence, customer acquisition at any cost in not the focus but getting
customers adopting sustainable modes is the key.

Key Business Challenge

How do we ensure that we remain differentiated with respect to our competitors?

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About abof.com
abof got incorporated on 5th Nov 2014, the team inception happened in Feb 2015, the beta launch
had happened on 25th Sep 2015 and the final launch took place on 16th Oct 2015, thus, making abof
the fastest concept to launch fashion e-commerce company in India.
Our Vision: Build Indias most admired online fashion player that provides youth with unparalleled
personalized shopping experience using a curated set of branded merchandise

Product Categories:
Partner Brands
Mens top-wear
Mens bottom-wear
Mens footwear
Womens Western-wear
Womens ethnic
Womens footwear
Womens accessories

abofs Own Brand

Men Casual
Womens Western-wear
Women Ethnic
Women Fusion
Mens Footwear
Womens Footwear
Womens Accessories

The total number of partner brands on abof.com is only about 80 to 100. We have anchor brands for
each of our product categories and a few supporting brands so as to provide a curated set of
merchandise for our users. (Check Appendix 1 for the partner brands on abof.com)

How is the abof different with respect to consumer experience?

abof identified the following opportunities and has formed its complete consumer experience journey
around these. The highlighted ones being:
1) Exploration Phase: CYBORGIZATION - Concentration on social media (especially Facebook) and
gamification.
Browsing: creating new shopping moments via creating a new meaningful system. We deliver
personalized shoppable content to our customers based on their information, real-time behavior
and preferences. Our Whats Hot section is in fact the landing page of abof.com which defines
our commitment to inspiration and discovery based commerce. Our users are encouraged to
discover fashion through the Whats Hot section.
Built for fashion conscious millennials, who have a unique take on their personal style, abof begins
its engagement with its customers right from the start with a unique style quiz that helps
understand the persona of the consumer and the style preference. Based on this information,
abof customizes its Whats Hot section to deliver more accurate, relevant, and personalized
content that truly matters to them. abof has chosen to innovate in the presentation of user
experience, design of the website and selection of merchandize. This is presented as exciting dose
of fashion content, style tips, trends and fashion news, which combines the visually stunning
picture-led approach of Instagram with short and sweet Twitter-like shoppable stories.
2) Communication: abofs focus is always to constantly engage with millennials, largely the 18-25 yr
old fashionistas. abofs entire experience is built around them. abof has adopted a tone of voice
and visual language which we believe connects with the millennials. We speak their language at
all touchpoints our UX has consciously adopted lower case font which friendly, all our customer
communication is youthful and quirky and our customer centre folks speak in a next-door-boy
language.
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3) Collection: abof has a large, albeit curated, collection of clothes, shoes and accessories for men
and women. While the world follows 2 fashion seasons, at abof we have 12 seasons since we add
new set of collections every month which are completely different and trendsetting.
abof has chosen to be much more selective and curated in its choice of brands and merchandise.
The collections are largely built using a mix of abof branded merchandise (thats designed and
sourced by our in-house team) and relevant partner brands.
4) Pricing: abof believes that its target consumer has small wallets and a tight budget. Therefore, the
merchandise has been carefully priced to make it rather irresistible for this segment. Versus
competition, who typically are more discount-centric, abofs philosophy is more honest and
irresistible pricing
5) abof Experience Zone: abof took a bold step to reach out to its consumers though the brick and
mortar route with an objective to introduce them to the unlimited possibilities of the online
fashion world where they can lay hands on fresh styles, spot trends, browse through the latest
fashion content, try clothes virtually, save wish-list. Having experienced this in the zone,
customers can shop online at their convenience.
The experience zone was aimed at encouraging people to shop online and experience the richness
of the virtual world of abof.com with largely three main objectives. Firstly, the customers can take
a tour of the abof.com website which offers latest styles, personalized fashion content and style
tips. AEZ brings the experience of shopping online to consumers where visitors can browse the
highly curated collection through its own brand abof and selected products from handpicked
brands. Visitors can also browse through the Whats Hot section of the glam-led platform which
offers latest styles, personalized fashion content and style tips.
6) 3D Trial Room: In a pioneering effort that redefines the shopping experience of Indian online
fashion shoppers, abof.com introduced 3D trial room. The biggest challenge for the fashion
ecommerce players is their struggle to provide appropriate size recommendations for customers.
With 3D trial room, which is enabled for most of the womens apparel, abof.coms customers can
virtually try products by inputting just three basic body measurements. The tool allows users to
visualize the garment on a customized 3D avatar-type model and get the right size
recommendation. In addition, the tool also allows users to layer garments providing a complete
outfit view. The tool is extremely engaging as it allows women to try out various looks and
customers tend to purchase even higher priced products such as evening dresses more confidently
using this tool.
7) Visual Search: Consumers can search a fashion item with a picture instead of text which makes it
easier for users to search and buy items that they see in their everyday life. A pan-India survey
conducted by abof.com showed that a large section of online shoppers use others as an inspiration
of fashion. To them what is trending is what they see in store windows, or what is worn by
celebrities in movies and magazines, and even fashion icons in their colleges and social circles.
Todays millennials want fashion items lying in the closets of their fashion icons. Consumers use
these inspirations while shopping online and look for similar products. Research showed that users
found it frustrating to find items similar to what they were looking for. One of the major
hindrances on using browse option was the cumbersome process to look through mountains of
products available online. Text based search has two challenges - (i) brands do not have consistent
product description, and therefore normal search pulls up irrelevant data and inaccurate matches,
and (ii) users dont know the right words or phrases in fashion terminology to describe what they
like or are looking for.
Visual search aims to short-circuit the path from inspiration to commerce by providing an easy
way for users to find products they loved on others through a simple click. For most users, details
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of what they liked gets lost in transition and translation. Visual search bridges this gap and
significantly shortens the lead time to convert purchase intention into transaction.
8) abof communicates and engages in a youthful and quirky language which connect with its
customers.
9) Post Purchase service:
a. One Click return
b. Multiple exchanges
c. No questions asked policy even for missing, defective and damaged returns

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Comparison with competitors

Some of our key competitors include: Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Myntra, Jabong, Zovi, Yepme and
Limeroad. Given below is a comparison with some of the above mentioned companies in terms of
time to launch, scale at launch and growth rate:

Given below is a competitive benchmarking of user experience:

Features from consumer UX
perspective

Ajio

Cliq

NNNow

abof

Myntra

Jabong

Voonik

Limeroad

Visual Search
Shoppable looks
Virtual Trial Feature
Personalized Fashion Feed
Fashion
content
including
shoppable stories
Brand Landing Pages
Category Landing Pages
Customer Self Service Features
Expedited Delivery Options
Social Shopping Features
Site Performance
At-Home Alteration

The feature is not

present on the website

The feature is present, but

is not a strong UI/UX
aspect of the website

The feature is present, and is

a strong UI/UX aspect of the
website

We feel we are ahead of our competition across various domains, like, Financials, Customer
experience & Technology:
Financials: We have a healthy Gross Margin, a positive Contribution Margin and an overall healthy
Unit Economics which would lead us to a sustainable growth trajectory.
Customer: We are loved by our customers which is clearly indicated by a healthy NPS of 41, a
decent order frequency of 1.5 and an App rating of 4.0. We have been able to restrict customer
initiated returns to single digit percentage as compared to about 20% returns for peers.
Our brand strength vis--vis our competitors lies in offering highly differentiated customer experience
to Millennials. Few of our key features that enable us to offer differentiated customer experience are
as below:
Our Unique Selling proposition remains offering the best-in-class, curated, fashionable apparels &
accessories to Millennials, and at the same time, enriching their buying experience.

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Questions
The User Experience and merchandise has been appreciated by many consumers. Recent research
suggests that the Aided awareness is about 43% and the brand is seen as more of a fashion expert
than a discount site.
Abof plans to scale-up the business more aggressively and therefore would like ideas and
recommendations (backed by sound research, consumer insights) on the following dimensions:
1. Which differentiators of abof resonate with consumers and should be retained? Which ones dont
and can be removed?
2. Which new differentiators should be added? Why?
3. What novel/innovative marketing approach(es) can be adopted for rapidly scale up at low cost?
4. Suggest 3 ideas which can have a viral impact. Please present the details of implementation with
cost benefit analysis
Submission Format

Power-point presentation (max 6 slides, including the cover slide)

For any queries / clarifications, please reach out to:

Sudhanshu Varma (Sudhanshu.varma@abof.adityabirla.com)

Our Cheat Sheet !

1.
2.
3.
4.

The solutions should ideally require low capital expenditure

The solutions should ideally be implementable within 3-6 months
It would help to visit abof.com and check out the shopping experience for valuable insights.
To have a better understanding of our value proposition, watch our CEO, Prashant Gupta, speak about
abof.com -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RufJkXbIdU
5. Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook for regular updates:
LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/company/aditya-birla-online-fashion-pvt-ltd-?trk=biz-companies-cym
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/abofians/?fref=ts

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Appendix 1: List of Partner Brands on abof.com

Levis
Puma
Biba

United Colors
Of Benetton
Fame Forever
by Lifestyle
Deal Jeans
Nineteen

Rangmanch
By Pantaloons
Urban Eagle
By Pantaloons
Parx
Femella

The Vanca

Pepe

Bata

Bossini

Knotty Derby

Allen Solly

Adidas
Harpa
Izabel London
by Pantaloons Fusion Beats
Indianink
People
Wear
Your
Global Desi
Mind
Van Heusen
Woman
Gritstones
San Frissco
Kultprit
Lino Perros
Pete

Lee

Locomotive

Highlander
Wildcraft
109F
Code
by
Lifestyle
Rain
and
Rainbow
Ginger
by
Lifestyle

Breakbounce
Shree

Only
Aurelia
Style Quotient Red Tape

Basics
Annabelle By
Pantaloons
Wet Blue
Trishaa
By
Pantaloons
E2O
Foot-In
AND

Fabindia

Black Coffee
ID
Linen
Club
Studio
20Dresses

Li Ning

Tribal Zone

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Vero Moda
Buckaroo
Killer

Free Authority
Vishudh
Being Human
Proline Active
Peter England
Casuals

Spykar
Indian Terrain
SF Jeans By
Pantaloons
Be for Bag
Yezdi
Power

Kappa
Van Heusen
Forca
by
Lifestyle
Faballey

Skechers
Bata - North
Star
Lee Cooper

Beevee

Ira Soleil

Lavie
Status Quo
Akkriti
By
Pantaloons
Louis Philippe
Honey
by Ajile
By
Pantaloons
Pantaloons

Peter England Folklore

Fila
Melange By
Lifestyle
Wrangler
John Players
Candie's By
Span
Pantaloons
Reebok

Duke
La Briza
Peter England
Jeans
Go Colors

LP Luxure

Tokyo Talkies
Bare Denim
By Pantaloons
Jack and Jones
Ayaany

Dexter

Catwalk
Fort Collins
LP
Louis Carlton
Philippe
London

Weinbrenner
V Dot By Van
Woodland
Heusen
Aradhyaa
Hush Puppies Jewel Arts
Byford
By
Black Panther Pantaloons
LP Sport by Van Heusen
Louis Philippe Sport

Noi
John Players
Jeans
Johnny Bravo Hush Puppies Bata
Solly Jeans Co LP Jeans by RICHARD
Inc 5
By Allen Solly Louis Philippe PARKER

Power
Allen
Sports

Solly