‘Fashion’-able Tech- Amit Sharma

Amit Sharma, Co- founder and CTO has made Fashalot  a premier destination for fashion in a quick time. 

Background

He did his BE from Bangalore University about 2 decades ago. He played different roles in HP, Oracle etc. then he joined Inuit, a global leader in Data Analytics Engineering. Then, about two years ago e-commerce began to expand. However, not more than 2% of shopping is online and the shopper doesn’t have much of a structured experience in this. There are gaps from the shoppers’ perspective. Not all retailers can run it online themselves. So he decided to build this technology platform, combining o2o. This was the right time to build this kind of platform, as e-commerce has become a little saturated. Therefore, the idea had to be radically different.

Competitor and Range

Fashalot is dominating the market and there is no direct competitor as this platform moves from online to physical shop, rather than vice versa as in the case of e-commerce. This solution is applicable to all kinds of retailers, including not both brands and also regional stores such as PN Rao, Vijayalakshmi Stores, Levi’s, Bata, Woodlands etc. there has been a fantastic growth trajectory of Fashalot.

Attitude towards Challenges

Challenges are welcome. Initially it took a lot of convincing, but now they understand it. 98% of retails are offline. The company is expanding in large cities such as Delhi, NCR and Bangalore and is now making its forays into other cities.

In true sense, Fashalot adds a digital user interface that sits on top of physical shopping world and help both retailers and shoppers to seamlessly connect over the most preferred mode in India – Mobile. With Fashalot app, Shoppers discover latest on-going in-store offers, stores nearby, latest trends and still maintain the charm of physical shopping – touch, feel & family outing. Retailers on the other end use Fashalot as a marketing platform and attract new and repeat foot traffic to their brick & mortar stores, which help them increase their sales. It also reverses the tide – In the erstwhile structure it has always been brand communicating with the customers, Fashalot lets users communicate with the brands when they want to shop, which makes it most contextual for both shoppers and retailers.

Possibility of its expansion abroad and possible challenges in it 

Across the world shopping, especially in high touch & feel categories such as fashion, is predominantly an offline purchases. International data suggests that over 86% consumers start shopping journey on one platform and end up buying in a different one. Further, 55% of users are inclined to purchase in-store in case an offer is made available on mobile. These are very helpful stats in our favour. We are creating our systems that are very scalable and can be easily replicated across geographies. We currently are evaluating opportunities of opening cities in India and will shortly look at international expansion.

Can it help Indian fashion business to expand abroad?

Without any doubt. Even currently a lot of our merchants are exploring opportunities within our partner ecosystem. We are helping select brands with store locations, analytics, trends, partnership opportunities etc. This is very useful information that Fashalot is helping brands and retailers with.

Vision of Work Ethics

Work is a combination of adventure, innovation and quality building.

Personal life

On the personal front, Amit is associated with Round Table, a social networking and charitable organization, for over a decade that helps to build schools across India, benefiting thousands of underprivileged children. His love for wildlife and nature photography compels him to travel widely. He also enjoys catching up with family and friends beyond office hours.