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May 23, 2025
By Kunal Purohit and Ananya Bhattacharya, Rest of World
Mumbai, India, 23 May 2025
Online retail continues to elude India’s richest man.
The Shein India app, launched by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail in partnership with the Chinese fast-fashion giant, has struggled to gain traction in a market where Amazon and Walmart have been fighting neck-to-neck for nearly a decade. Downloads for Shein India nosedived from 50,000 a day shortly after its launch in early February to 3,311 in early April, according to AppMagic, a U.S.-based app performance tracker.
In April, when U.S. tariffs hit China, the app saw renewed interest as it was in the news, but experts are unclear on whether this growth is sustainable.
“Unlike earlier times, now … [the] market is saturated with multiple options and offers, and user interest can quickly dwindle,” Yugal Joshi, partner at global research firm Everest Group, told Rest of World.
Kushal Bhatnagar of Indian consulting firm Redseer, however, sees the late-April spike as a healthy sign, given that Reliance has yet to run paid marketing campaigns for Shein.
Reliance Retail declined to respond to Rest of World’s queries about its partnership with Shein.
Reliance launched Shein for India five years after the original Shein app was banned in the country over border tensions with China. But the Shein that has returned is entirely separate from Shein’s global platform: Rather than selling made-in-China clothes and accessories directly to consumers, Shein now operates as a technology partner, while Reliance Retail handles the heavy lifting — from sourcing and manufacturing to distribution. All consumer data is managed by the Indian company.
The partnership is part of Ambani’s broader effort to overhaul his retail business, whose valuation fell to $50 billion in 2025 from $125 billion in 2022. Although the company has made a push into digital platforms like JioMart, Ajio, and most recently Shein India, the bulk of its retail revenue still comes from its 18,000 physical stores.
Lagging behind Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart, which together control nearly 60% of India’s e-commerce market, Reliance has spent years trying to break into the sector. Between 2020 and 2025, Ambani’s group acquired majority stakes in companies spanning digital services, online pharmaceuticals, and quick commerce. But the investments have yet to position Reliance as a serious challenger to Amazon and Flipkart.
Analysts say the Indian behemoth hopes to leverage Shein’s artificial intelligence-powered trendspotting and automated inventory systems to pursue an ambitious goal: capturing a major share of India’s e-commerce market, projected to hit $345 billion by 2030.
According to Kaustav Sengupta, director of insights at VisionNxt, an Indian government-funded initiative that uses AI to forecast fashion trends, such a model is likely to make good use of Reliance’s humongous customer data sets: more than 476 million subscribers for its Jio telecom brand, 300 million users for e-commerce platform JioMart, and 452 million subscribers for its news and entertainment portfolio, consisting of 63 channels, a streaming service, and digital news outlets.
“With these data points, Reliance wants to now sell fashion products, so all it needs is a system where it can feed all these data points,” Sengupta told Rest of World. He said the model would be able to predict best-selling products and suggest the right prices for them.
The original Shein app uses AI-driven models for intelligent warehousing and to spot customer trends before manufacturing a new product. It scales the manufacturing up or tweaks the designs based on the feedback. At any given time, the Shein website has a catalogue of more than 600,000 items. Its Indian iteration does not match up, according to reviews on the Google Play store. Several customer reviews for Reliance’s Shein app are critical of higher prices and reduced options. The app’s rating hovered at 2 out of 5 until February; in May, it climbed to 4.4, but reviews were still a mixed bag.
Reviews of the Indian app highlight the disparity with Shein’s global version, criticizing higher prices and a reduced selection of categories and styles.
As of April 25, Reliance Retail said only 12,000 products were live on Shein India, a stark contrast to the 600,000 items available on Shein’s global platforms. While Shein is reportedly set to debut on the London Stock Exchange this year, Ambani’s years-old promise to take Reliance Retail public remains unfulfilled.
Reliance Retail, which accounts for around 30% of the conglomerate’s overall business, is facing a slowdown in annual growth. Its sales rose just 7.9% in the fiscal year ending March 2025, down from 17.8% the previous year. Meanwhile, shares of rival Tata Group’s retail and fashion arm, Trent, have soared by 133%.
“Reliance would have looked at reviving that momentum and riding on it, while for Shein, adding India back on its portfolio of markets could be a plus point before its proposed public listing,” Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a brand management consultancy that has worked with various global e-commerce brands including Ikea, told Rest of World.
A Reliance Retail official privy to information about its fast fashion expansion plans told Rest of World the partnership with Shein also hinges on global manufacturing ambitions as the Chinese company is trying to “source its products from other countries like India” to meet the “additional demand that is coming from newer markets.” Reliance Retail has tapped a network of small and midsize Indian manufacturers to locally source products, and its subsidiary Nextgen Fast Fashion Limited is leading the charge. “We need to first scale up our domestic manufacturing, before our partnership starts manufacturing for global markets. Let us see how that goes, first,” the official said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorized to share this information publicly.
India’s Gen Z population is at 377 million and counting, and their spending power is set to surpass $2 trillion by 2035, according to a 2024 report by Boston Consulting Group. Every fast-fashion retailer wants to capture this market, but it “is very new even for Reliance,” Rimjim Deka, founder of Indian fast-fashion platform Littlebox, told Rest of World.
Deka said smaller brands like hers “just see [a trend] and implement it,” which could take a large conglomerate months to do, by which time the trend may have lost relevance.
Reliance’s previous attempts to attract young shoppers with clothing brands like Foundry and Yousta failed to find much success. Anandita Bhuyan, who works in trend forecasting and product creation for fast-fashion clients like H&M and Myntra, told Rest of World the company has struggled to effectively leverage consumer data and target India’s youth.
According to the Reliance Retail official, the company is confident that if “there are 10 existing brands, the 11th brand will also get picked up as long as there is value and there is fashion.”
“Shein already has a recall among the youth. It gives us yet another brand in our portfolio through which we can cater to the youth,” the official said.
Shein was built in China on the back of more than 5,400 micro manufacturers — a scattered and loosely organized network of small and midsize factories.
In January this year, on a visit to China, Deka met with manufacturers working for Shein and Temu. On the outskirts of Guangzhou, Deka saw factories set up in areas that appeared residential, with “women sitting inside houses” making clothes.
“The tech is built in a way that somebody sitting there is able to see that, okay, next 15 days or next one month, how much I should be making … that is the kind of integration they have done,” Deka said.
Deka told Rest of World this model is easier to replicate at a smaller scale. “Me, coming from [the] supply chain industry, I understand that it is much easier for a brand like us because we are at a very smaller scale. We can still go to those people, we can still build it in a very unorganized way and then pull it off,” she said. Her company’s annual net revenue is 750 million Indian rupees ($8.6 million).
“[But] somebody like Reliance, they just cannot go haphazard here. … It has to be always organized,” Deka said.
Shein moved its headquarters to Singapore sometime between late 2021 and early 2022, a strategic departure to distance itself from its Chinese origins and facilitate hassle-free international expansion amid the U.S.-China trade war.
India is part of Shein’s wider strategy to diversify its supply chain — one that also includes a newly leased warehouse near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and efforts to establish alternative manufacturing hubs in Brazil and Turkey.
But in India, Reliance needs Shein as much as Shein needs Reliance for its global pivot. According to Bloomberg, Reliance Retail is focusing on creating leaner operations to weather a wider consumption slump in the Indian economy.
“It remains to be seen whether the Reliance-Shein combine can deliver on the brand’s promise with a wide range of products, fast and on-trend,” Dutta said. “In the years that Shein has been absent, the Indian market has evolved further, competition has intensified, and past goodwill is not enough to provide sales momentum.”
Kunal Purohit is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai, India.
Ananya Bhattacharya is a reporter for Rest of World covering South Asia’s tech scene. She is based in Mumbai, India.
(Published in Rest of World)
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August 19, 2024
Ratna Bhushan, Economic Times
New Delhi, 19 August 2024
Close to a dozen small to mid-sized global cafes and restaurant brands have either entered India in the past two quarters or are in talks with local players at a time when large global chains are seeing sharp decline in same store sales and growth.
Mid-sized global chains are making investments even in a modest range of Rs. 20-30 crore to tap select cities and intend to keep store counts under about 30 to stay profitable on each store. This is in contrast to earlier times when cafes and chains entered India with mega deals and investment plans, executives said.
Belgian bakery Le Pain Quotidien, French patisserie chain Laduree, UK’s JD Wetherspoon and Frank HotDogs are among those to have inked collaborations with Indian partners, while newer homegrown ones such as Harley’s, Paper & Pie, abCoffee and First Coffee are expanding with first-time investors and mid-rung store rollouts.
“A combination of factors is driving this change of newer, smaller launches,” said Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of retail consultancy Third Eyesight. “There are niches the newer chains are addressing as consumers’ choices evolve and get more specific. Also, there’s a broadening of a wealth base in India leading to mid-sized business houses having capability to invest and willingness to try out newer segments,” he said.
With the big-bang launches in food services drying up, there’s been a mushrooming of small deals that is expected to surge.
Bake & Brew, which has inked a master franchise agreement with Belgian bakery chain Le Pain Quotidien to re-enter India, is investing Rs 35 crore in the first year. “We’ll start in metros and may expand to smaller towns later. We also see potential in travel retail, airports and larger train stations,” Annick Van Overstraeten, chief executive of Le Pain Quotidien, told ET. Bake & Brew is backed by the Nalanda group with core business interests in automotive metal parts.
Earlier this month, the French patisserie chain Laduree said it was launching its cafe at Ritz-Carlton, Pune, in collaboration with CK Israni Group which has business interests in home decor and construction. Its Managing Director Chandni Nath Israni said in a statement that the CK Israni group planned to expand Laduree’s presence across other Indian cities.
Experimenting in newer cuisines is also driving the change. “Our decision to expand in India stems from a deep appreciation for variety and a passion for bold flavours. We see great potential in the Indian market,” said Benjamin Attal, founder of US chain Franks Hot Dog.
Smaller and newer homegrown chains, in contrast, are expanding, backed by mid-ticket investors and business houses, many of whom are foraying into food services for the first time.
Last week Brigade Group, a realtor, announced a partnership with specialty coffee chain abCoffee to set up six outlets within Brigade properties.
“We partnered with abCoffee to enhance the F&B offerings at our office parks. abCoffee is able to retrofit into operational buildings without requiring additional water or gas points,” Arvind Rao, vice president – commercial business, Brigade Group, said.
Specialty coffee startup First Coffee plans to open 35 stores by 2024-end “focused on delivery and minimalist store aesthetic,” according to a company statement, to sell flavoured coffees, cold brews and bubble teas.
(Published in Economic Times)
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December 7, 2023
Christina Moniz, Financial Express
December 7, 2023
Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail (ABFRL) on Wednesday announced a partnership with Christian Louboutin, a designer brand known for its signature extremely high red-soled heels.
As per the terms of the deal, the current Indian business of the luxury shoemaker will be transferred into a newly-incorporated arm of ABFRL where the partners will hold equal stakes. Ashish Dikshit, MD, ABFRL, said in a statement, “This partnership… exemplifies our ambition to develop and shape the future of the luxury market in India.”
Christian Louboutin made its entry into the Indian market with its first store in Delhi in 2012 and later launched its second store in Mumbai. Announcing the JV, Alexis Mourot, Christian Louboutin Group CEO, said, “India is an extremely important market for us.”
The fact that luxury markets in Europe and even in China are seeing sluggish growth has made India a strong emerging opportunity for brands such as Christian Louboutin, note experts.
The brand, which was founded in Paris in 1991, has since diversified into categories such as handbags, accessories and beauty and is present in over 30 countries.
With this JV, ABFRL will be taking on Reliance Brands, which has partnered with global luxury brands such as Burberry, Ferragamo, Hugo Boss and Versace in India.
Devangshu Dutta, CEO of Third Eyesight, said, “For ABFRL, the ambition is to create a diverse portfolio of brands catering to a range of consumer segments.”
Having been in India for a while now, the Louboutin brand is well aware of the potential for growth in the market. One of the key factors driving growth for luxury is the rise of high net worth individuals (HNIs), which is the fastest growing anywhere in the world, say observers.
The number of ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) in India is expected to rise 58.4% in the next five years from 12,069 in 2022 to 19,119 in 2027, a report by Knight Frank said in May.
In recent years, India has also seen new luxury shopping destinations coming up in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, but experts believe that the total addressable market and the number of luxury shopping centres are still small.
Though there is “potential”, notes Santosh Sreedhar, partner at Avalon Consulting, this segment will take a few years to really take off. “Luxury is a long-term game in India, which is why brands need to have Indian partners like Reliance and Aditya Birla with deep pockets and vision to stay committed for the long haul.” E-tailers like Tata Cliq are also enabling omnichannel growth, says Sreedhar.
With a revenue of Rs 12,418 crore, ABFRL has a strong network of 3,977 brand stores across the country. It is present across 33,535 multi-brand outlets and 6,723 points of sales in department stores across India as on March 31, 2023.
It has a repertoire of brands such as Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England, besides long-term exclusive tie-ups with global brands like Ralph Lauren, Hackett London, Ted Baker and Galeries Lafayette. Among Indian designers, ABFRL has strategic partnerships with Shantnu & Nikhil, Tarun Tahiliani, Sabyasachi and House of Masaba.
(Published in Financial Express)
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October 26, 2023
Sagar Malviya, Economic Times
26 October 2023
Surging demand for fitness wear and sports equipment for disciplines other than cricket and football helped Decathlon’s India unit expand sales 37% to Rs 3,955 crore in FY23. With more than 100 large, warehouse-like stores selling products catering to 85 sporting disciplines, the French company is bigger than Adidas, Nike and Asics all put together in India.
In FY22, sales were Rs 2,936 crore, according to its latest filings with the Registrar of Companies. The retailer, however, posted a net loss of Rs 18.6 crore during the year ended March 2023 compared to a net profit of Rs 36 crore a year ago.
Experts said a host of factors – from pricing products about 30-40% lower than competing products to selling everything from running shoes, athleisure wear to mountaineering equipment under its own brands – has worked in its favour. “They have an extremely powerful format across different sporting activities and have something for both active and casual wear shoppers. For them, the market is still under penetrated with the kind of comprehensive product range they sell for outdoor sports beyond shoes and clothing,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consulting firm Third Eyesight. “Even their front end staff seem to have a strong domain knowledge about products compared to rival brands.”
By selling only private labels, Decathlon, the world’s biggest sporting goods firm, controls almost every bit of operations, from pricing and design to distribution, and keeps costs and selling prices low.
Decathlon uses a combination of in-house manufacturing and outsourcing to stock its shelves. In fact, it sources nearly 15% of its global requirement from India across sporting goods. And nearly all of its cricket merchandise sold globally is designed and made in India.
(Published in Economic Times)
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July 28, 2023
Manu Balachandran, Forbes India
July 28, 2023
Revant Himatsingka doesn’t despise junk food.
The 31-year-old firmly believes that those who consume it also know the perils and long-term risks associated with it. From obesity to heart disease and diabetes, junk food is often counted as a more serious threat to life than even smoking according to some studies. “Most people who consume Coke and cigarettes know they are bad for you and consume them,” Himatsingka says.
Himatsingka, however, has a problem with junk food masquerading as healthy. That’s why over the past few months he has been busy calling out its makers, and in the process taking on some of the world’s biggest FMCG behemoths.
Since April this year, Himatsingka, through his social media profile, Foodpharmer, claims to have taken on almost all the FMCG companies in India, whose products he has reviewed, and in the process has been swamped with lawsuits. Himatsingka has a following of half a million followers on Instagram.
“Food is probably 60-70 percent of what shapes our health,” Himatsingka told Forbes India over a telephone call. “And what is shaping our food today is packaged food, which is very different from what our grandparents grew up eating. Most packaged food is just selling junk and they’re marketing it as healthy. This happens even more in relatively poorer countries.”
Himatsingka began his war against fake claims with a video about Bournvita, made by confectionary maker Mondelez. That video, critiquing the children’s drink for its excessive use of sugar, was shared across social media and on WhatsApp. Himatsingka poked fun at Bournvita’s tagline Tayyari Jeet Ki (preparing for victory), instead suggesting that Bournvita was preparing children for diabetes.
He listed out all the ingredients in Bournvita, debunked claims that the drink is healthy, and remarked that half of a package of Bournvita is sugar, and [it] even contains cancer-causing ingredients.
Trouble soon followed. Mondelez sent Himatsingka a legal notice asking him to take down the video within 24 hours. Coincidentally, the notice came to him on the last day of his notice period at McKinsey where he had been working as a consultant. Unfortunately for Mondelez, the video continues to be in circulation, more so across WhatsApp. Himatsingka took down the video and even issued a statement saying that he had no interest or resources to take on the company in any court cases.
“Most people have Coke once a week,” Himatsingka says. “But people have Bournvita twice a day. So you end up having 14 [servings of] Bournvita in a week. So, the net impact of Bournvita is probably worse than that of Coke.”
“As a growing market, India is potentially a natural “dumping ground” for poor products and processes that have been used by prominent brands in other markets,” Devangshu Dutta, the founder and CEO of management consultancy firm Third Eyesight says. “It is incumbent upon Indian customers to be diligent, picking up cues not only from Indian consumer-activists and but also their counterparts in the developed economies.”
From Kolkata to New York and back
Himatsingka grew up in an upper-middle-class household, with a homemaker mother and a father running his own business in Kolkata.
After his schooling, Himatsingka went to New York to study finance at the New York University’s NYU Stern School of Business where he graduated in finance. For a year after that he worked with a bank in the US. At 22, he ventured out into writing a book, Selfienomics, a self-help comedy book focusing on managing finances, health, religion, death, starting a business, and even completing projects on time.
“I wrote one chapter on how to read a food label even then,” Himatsingka says. “Back then, and even now I believe that it is the most important skill in the 21st century.” While he did secure admission into the illustrious IIM Bangalore, Himatsingka turned it down, instead focussing on his book.
By 2018, Himatsingka went to do an MBA at Wharton and followed it up with a course in nutrition, while also starting work at McKinsey as a consultant. “As a consultant, you work to solve business problems and you try to structure solutions,” Himatsingka says. “We focus on our career when it comes to structuring solutions and being data driven. But I try to extrapolate that into life. In life, one of our most important aspects is health.”
Himatsingka was also concerned by the growing link between cancer and heart diseases to packaged and processed food. In 2019, a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) suggested a possible link between “ultra-processed” foods and cancer. The study defined ultra-processed foods as those lacking vitamins and fibre, which also contain high levels of sugar, fat, and salt. Such ultra-processed food, the study noted, represents as much as half of the daily energy intake in several developed countries.
“This is such a big problem and no one is talking about it,” Himatsingka says. “No one is trying to solve it. So, I thought, I wanted to do something in this space.”
That meant, Himatsingka, who by his own account was making very good money in the US, decided it was time to come back home, and try and do something around awareness. “I’m very social impact driven,” Himatsingka says. “April 1st is when I made the Bournvita video. I made a video showcasing how Bournvita was falsely labelling itself. Their label showed that you get stronger bones and muscles. Then I got a legal notice from Bournvita asking me to take down the video in 24 hours.”
The idea for the Bournvita video, Himatsingka says, came from his concern that a product like Coke had become the face of obesity and junk food, while many others were marketing themselves as healthy, without it being so.
Mondelez, the makers of Bournvita soon retorted that the drink contains nutrients such as Vitamin A, C, D, iron, zinc and copper that help build immunity and have been part of its formulation for 70 years. It also said that every serve of Bournvita has 7.5 grams of added sugar, much less than the recommended limit for children.
imatsingka though found support from unexpected quarters. The Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest India (NAPi) a think tank comprising independent experts in epidemiology, human nutrition, community nutrition and paediatrics, medical education, administration, and management, issued a statement supporting Himatsingka.
“The food product Bournvita falls under the ultra-processed food (UPF) category based on its ingredients list,” NAPi said in a statement. “This industrial formulation is inherently harmful. There is enough scientific evidence present in the public domain pertaining to the negative impact of increasing consumption of UPFs on human health, which include several chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and depression (Non-Communicable Diseases-NCDs).”
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) also issued a notice to Mondelez asking the company to review and withdraw all misleading advertisements, packaging, and labels. The NCPCR is a statutory body to protect child rights.
Fighting it out now
Personally, for Himatsingka, the pushback from Mondelez couldn’t have come at a worse time. “I had just quit my job. And my family was asking me what I was trying to do with my life. They said ‘you had such a good job, you left all of that, now you are getting into a legal fight’,” Himatsingka says. “So I removed the video as they asked me to. And that got even more attention.”
Since then, Himatsingka has been actively taking on FMCG companies and their products in the country, ranging from ketchup, and chyawanprash to juices and bread among others. Himatsingka recounts having received legal notices from Dabur and even been asked to remove a video by Sting Energy, owned by PepsiCo.
He says his strength, however, comes from many parents who have reached out to him and are thanking his efforts for making them aware of the importance of reading labels. “People are reading labels for the first time and have now started figuring that many of the products are not that healthy,” Himatsingka says.
However, the pressure of the job continues to be heavy. “There is a lot of pressure,” the 31-year-old says. “These companies send legal notices and I have no idea how to deal with it. These are very technical and very dense documents, where they analyse each line and write a paragraph on each line. I once got a 300-page document from one company and they were asking me for a few crores. It’s strenuous.”
What lies ahead?
For now, the 31-year-old says his focus remains steadfast on raising awareness around food.
“Because of the Bournvita controversy, the rollover impact is that all the other companies are also going to get scared now to falsely market themselves,” Himatsingka says. “I cannot think of a human problem that is relatively easy to solve than nutrition labels and it creates massive impact.”
A few weeks ago, Himatsingka raised awareness about the growing consumption of bread in India and how most makers of bread who sell whole wheat or brown bread use more maida, which has less fiber, and is unhealthy. He had also called out juice makers for their use of sugar by comparing various mango juices available in the country.
“When a movie comes out, there are reviews and I can openly say whether I liked a movie or not,” Himatsingka says. “So why can’t I say the same about a food product? I’m just unboxing a product and saying what is there inside it. So I don’t think I’m legally wrong. They can ask me for whatever money they want. But I don’t think they can win on that.”
Along the way, he says he has also seen positive changes in companies. For instance, Himatsingka made a video on ketchup and explained how Maggi Rich Tomato Ketchup has more sugar than tomato in its ingredients. “Last month, they (Nestle) announced that they’re changing the recipe,” Himatsingka says. “They’re reducing their sugar content and they are going to have more tomatoes than sugar. One tiny change like that has such a major impact on the large scale.”
Experts agree that the growing scrutiny about ingredients is certain to give FMCG majors sleepless nights. “Given that food has a disproportionate share in our spend, an enormous impact on our health as well as a tremendous ecological footprint, it is only natural for consumers to question the composition, the origins, and the overall impact of the food that is being sold by leading brands,” says Dutta of Third Eyesight. “Over the last several decades, packaged food has become laden with synthetic flavouring, colouring, and shelf-life-extending chemicals, which are being called into question by activists through blogs and social media. On several occasions, prominent companies are forced to change their product composition or, at the very least, admit to the health-negative implications of their ingredients.”
Meanwhile, over the past three or four weeks, Himatsingka says he hasn’t been flooded with lawsuits. That’s partly because he has become quite careful about how he words his statements, instead focusing only on the merits of his argument.
“There are millions of problems in the world. But most of the problems are very hard to solve, like air pollution. But teaching people how to read a food label is easy. I feel learning how to read a food label is more important than coding in the 21st century, where most of what we’re eating is processed or packaged.”
Indeed, the fight is long. And Himatsingka is only gearing up for more.
(Published in Forbes India)
