To gear up for the festive season, Libas is opening 11 company-owned and company-operated EBOs on August 15, along with betting big on quick commerce. The brand is also planning to set up its own warehouses, upgrade its app experience, and launch its own quick commerce by Diwali, Sidhant Keshwani, founder & CEO, Libas told ETRetail.
In quick commerce, the brand already has a presence across Zepto, Myntra Now, and Flipkart Minutes, and now it is further planning to expand its presence on Swiggy Instamart as well before Diwali.
“This festive season, we are expecting a growth of around 30-35 per cent over the last 2 years,” he asserted.
At present, quick commerce contributes only one per cent of the overall revenue of the brand; however, the brand plans to take it to 10 per cent by the end of the next fiscal year.
“By Diwali, we will be launching our quick commerce in a few pin codes, and depending on the response, we will be scaling it further. Currently, we are in the Beta testing mode,” he explained.
“In e-commerce, brands generally keep a stock of up to 60-75 days; however, through quick commerce, we plan to bring it down to 45 days,” he further added.
Going ahead, the brand foresees 60-70 per cent of the online revenue coming from its mobile app.
The brand, which operates on the COCO model, will be opening these upcoming stores at locations including Jasola, Rohini, and Gaur City in Delhi-NCR; Lucknow; Indore; Kochi; Amritsar; Udaipur; Bel Road and Sarjapur in Bengaluru; and Mumbai.
The brand opens stores across 2 sizes – 1,000 sq.ft and 2,500 sq.ft and the CAPEX to open a store of the size stands around Rs 80 lakh.
“We are eyeing to close this fiscal with 70 operating stores and will be adding another 60-70 stores next fiscal year as well,” he stated.
At present, 80 per cent of the revenue of the brand is contributed by online channels, and the remaining 20 per cent comes from offline channels.
“We plan to change it to 60:40 between online and offline by the end of the next fiscal year,” he said.
“Currently, 60 per cent of our business comes from metro cities; however, the majority of new customer acquisition and new growth is coming from smaller towns now,” he asserted.
The brand, which has a presence across more than 700 shop-in-shops, plans to expand its presence to 100 more MBOs by this fiscal year’s end.
“We are not expanding our presence at shop-in-shops in a big way because the majority of our investments are going into expanding our own stores,” he said.
Going ahead, the brand is also planning to foray into new categories like perfumes and bet big on sarees. By the end of the next fiscal year, it plans to take the contribution of sarees up to 15 per cent of the overall business of the brand.
“At present, we offer 75 styles every week and plan to scale it up to 200 every week by next year,” he asserted.
Currently, the average order value for the brand online stands at Rs 1,600- Rs 1,800, and offline, it is around Rs 3,000.
The brand, which raised Rs 150 crore from ICICI Ventures last year, is planning to do a small pre-IPO round to support its offline expansion plans.
“We are planning to go public in the next 2 years,” he stated.
The brand, which closed the last fiscal year with early single-digit EBITDA last fiscal year, is planning to close this fiscal year with Rs 650 crore and eyes to be a Rs 1,000 crore brand by the next fiscal year end.
