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Brand Mantra's a click away
Economic times, 29 June 2007

Online brand merchandising, virtual stores, retail, ctail (corporate sales), ptail (production tail), etail (online sales) and all the tailspin constitutes Hyderabad-based eYantra. The name comes from a fusion of energy and machine, e stands for energy and Yantra stands for machine, when you put energy into the machine it runs — that's the mantra of its founder Phani N Raj, an ex-consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Chicago.

Was it easy to quit a cosy PwC job for a concept — online brand merchandising? He says: “It was a difficult choice but the entrepreneurial spirit in me was too strong. I took a well-balanced decision of coming to India and starting up with a completely new concept.”

“There were difficulties at every stage of the business, but I believed in it so strongly and also knew that there is no big player in India in this field and had the opportunity to take the top spot in terms of brand recall, the effort has been worthwhile,” he adds.

You make a virtual visit to the brand store, select the goods and order them online. That's all you need to do to get a branded cap or a jacket of your organization. That's what eYantra facilitates for you. The idea of an online brand merchandise company came out of necessity, he says. Today most of the companies are geographically spread out and employee retention and brand awareness among the most diverse base is a very challenging task. eYantra was getting orders from across the facilities of a particular company.

It was a time consuming affair as each of the facilities wanted to see the sample and it took long time for its approval. “To cut that short we suggested an online model where all the samples will be pre-approved and we will maintain inventory so that they could be shipped immediately. This has been liked by many companies and that is the reason we already have 28 companies in short span of five months of launching this solution called Confix,” says Phani.

eYantra provides an exclusive online brand store, e-commerce support with all major currencies, a dedicated relationship manager for all communications, free warehousing of their brand merchandise, free inventory management and free customer service. They don't charge the corporates for providing the online merchandising solution. The revenue model of eYantra is dependent on the transactions that occur on these online brand stores. The turnover of eYantra for FY 2007-08 is Rs 25 crore and the company projects a turnover of Rs 100 crore for FY08-09.

Team eYantra has a right mix of experience and energy, feels the MD. More than 60% of the management team are from the IIMs or leading B-schools abroad. Ranjith Boyanapalli heads the e-tail division, and has served stints at Infosys and CSC earlier. Manish Saini, who heads the operations, has extensive textile experience, and was a functional consultant with Infosys. Prasad Ajinkya, head-technology team has worked on both product & service oriented companies, including Tech Mahindra. And what's the future of eYantra? They have recently launched Confix, the online brand store solution for corporates. It has already been confirmed with 25 of the top leading companies of India . It provides a one stop solution for all merchandising needs of a corporate and its employees. This solution helps them in funnelling all the requirements into eYantra. He adds: “We plan to set up 250 online brand stores within the next two years resulting in revenues of excess of Rs 250 crore. On the infrastructure front, we are building a state-of-the-art manufacturing unit in Apparel Park , Hyderabad with a capacity of more than 2,000 T-shirts per shift. We will be opening our first global office in China by end of this year.

” The brand merchandising industry is completely unorganised and extremely fragmented, and eYantra has been a major player so far. But what about competitors? “Pantaloons has already started it and Reliance has conveyed their intentions of entering this segment. We, however, face competition from many local brands in their specific product lines, but globally we have lot of competition and there are big players out there, ” says Phani. With the retail industry booming, the quality of the customer base is going to play a vital make-or-break