Reliance enters fashion space with launch of 'The Voice of Fashion'

Recently, an international media site covered an opinion piece ‘Amazon Has a New Rival in India, and It Isn’t Walmart’. The piece explains a major threat will be posed by none other than ‘Reliance’ to all the e-commerce biggies in near future.

Reliance has already begun the process in this segment and is setting the tone.

IMG Reliance, a joint venture between IMG Worldwide of US and Reliance Industries, on Thursday launched a fashion portal ‘thevoiceoffashion.com’ and announced the arrival in the online fashion category.

Initially, the fashion website will cover daily news, fashion trends and video series. It has also partnered with International Institute of Fashion Design (INIFD) Good Earth, House of Anita Dongre, Apple Music and Fashion Revolution to cater to the demand of the portal.

The company, however, didn’t disclose whether it plans to take the business forward and convert into a fashion e-commerce platform. But, it seems like the company has plans to explore the e-commerce business soon and it can make the entry via a fashion route.

Recently, the government draft on e-commerce policy has become a matter of strong contention among e-commerce biggies such as Amazon and Flipkart, government and Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Group.

Flipkart and Amazon have requested the government to come up with a fresh draft as they see the current version unfavourable. While representatives from Reliance were the part of the panel that proposed e-commerce policy framework.

For Reliance, if the e-commerce draft gets approval by the cabinet in the current form, the company will benefit immensely. The group has major goals in digital business. After disrupting telecom, the group eyes e-commerce segment through a hybrid model (combination of offline and online channels).

The development was first reported by ET.