StyleAdda.com To Skip India Launch, US & UK First Priority

Online, May 14, 2012 (Newswire.com) - StyleAdda.com which was supposed to be the India's biggest online shopping mall may skip on India launch this year. The target market will be now Non Resident Indians (NRI's) in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK). StyleAdda.com will foray into fashion retailing and will slowly move onto other business verticals followed by full fledged launch in India.

The 17 people management team in India may be asked to leave or join back in the US or UK.

StyleAdda.com which has involved investments of more than US $19.2 million or INR 100 crore will see some tough competition from other e-commerce retailers targeting NRI's. They may buy warehouses and may open offices in the US & UK. They may also hire a 50-60 people team to effectively manage the international operations. The web development and customer care team will operate from India.

An email query sent to the StyleAdda.com's management asking the total investments involved went answered.

The valuation of StyleAdda.com has already surpassed US $519 million or INR 2700 crore on the Exhilway Private Capital Market. The member base has exceeded 3.7 million but the concern of the investors remains whether the user base added six months back is active and interested in the e-store or will they like it after its formal launch.

"StyleAdda.com has the power of economies of scale, money is not a problem for them. They will prefer warehouse model over supplier model. The valuation of the company in current scenario seems to be stretched but keeping in mind the size of business they are talking about, it seems small in front of other Indian e-commerce retailers," said Avneesh Thakur of Newman Private Wealth.

Other Indian e-commerce retailers like Flipkart is valued at US $1.5 billion inspite of severe losses.

StyleAdda.com has to still make money and the management team is working hard to make the business model profitable.

"The pricing and service is what e-commerce all about. It's not about valuations it's about being profitable in the competitive environment", said Charu Shukla of Stacy Medlin, a Delhi based garment manufacturer and one of the supplier of StyleAdda.com.

StyleAdda.com which was earlier scheduled to be launched in March faced problems from its investors who partially exited when the Indian government imposed some restrictions on private equity funding.

StyleAdda.com may internationally launch a heavy duty marketing campaign to attract the fashion oriented userbase.