About Yepme
Headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana India, Yepme is an online shopping company. It was established in 2011 in the month of April. Yepme specializes in the online retailing of women’s and men’s accessories and garments. The company positioned itself as a fully-fledged private label fashion brand in August 2011.
Launched by three alumni of IIT and IIM, Anand Jadhav, Sandeep Sharma, and Vivek Gaur, Yepme.com became a big brand soon after.
According to an interview with Gaur on Bloomberg UTV, in 2010, the founders saw great growth potential in India’s online shopping market. Having started its operations as an online apparel retailer, in August 2011 Yepme.com decided to focus on private label fashion-wear instead of branded apparel.
Business Objective of Yepme
To become top e-commerce retail platform in India and overseas.
Strategies adopted by Yepme
Initially, the brand started only men’s apparel but soon after June 2012, the company started dealing with women’s apparel too. Yepme broadened and started their business in overseas in the year 2014. Their target was NRI market and they created “Yepmeworld”. As on the year 2015, they provided services in the US with a plan to expand services to other countries as well. In India, the company offers services in more than 1k cities and delivers close to 5,00,000 units in a month.
1. Target audience
The marketing strategy of the founders of the company was on point. They targeted their customers from the I and II tier cities instead of those from the metropolitan ones. The point was smaller cities were lacking in big brands retail stores and this space was leveraged by the Yepme company. Since there was a vacant space in the market for private label fashion wear, Yepme.com fully utilized that space and has set itself as a brand name in the online fashion industry.
2. Fans on social media platforms
There are more than 6 million fans on Facebook and about 4.5k followers on Twitter. The company seems to give immense importance to social media marketing and has received huge success which has led to attracting over 6 million fans on Facebook.
The company gives dense importance to social media marketing and has received gigantic success, attracting over 6 million fans on Facebook and around 4000 followers on Twitter.
3. Investments
Yepme.com in the year 2011-12 raised “Series A” investment of $8 million from an India-focused venture fund, Helion Ventures Partners. Seeing the growth factor of the company, Helion made the second round of investment making the total raised funds to being $20 million.
4. Ratings by magazine
- Yepme.com was rated as one of the top 5 e-commerce startup revolutionizing the industry by the top business magazine Forbes.
- In 2014, Yepme was awarded “Web only Brand of the Year” by e-Tailing India.
- Yepme was also ranked as one of the top 20 fashion brands in the world by Stylophane, a leader in digital marketing services.
As per the company, 70% of its revenue comes from the category of men.
5. Contracts with other e-commerce
Along with selling on Yepme.com, the company has made contracts with Snapdeal and one of the largest e-commerce marketplaces, Flipkart in order to sell their products.
According to Gartner Inc. report, “The e-commerce market in India is expected to reach $6 billion in 2015 which will be around 70% increase over the year 2014 revenue of $3.5 billion”.
6. Popularity on Facebook
As per a research, it was seen that 66% of Yepme followers access the Facebook page via mobile phones. This popularity of Yepme on the Facebook has contributed on an average of 30 percent of visitors to their website per month.
60% of the customers who reach to Yepme via Facebook and complete a transaction are using mobile phones.
7. Brand promotions via Bollywood
The company has made huge investments for the promotion of brand by making advertisements with famous celebrities of Bollywood.
In early stages, Yepme conducted a fashion show in Delhi in the month of August 2011 which became the first Indian online retailer to conduct a fashion show.
8. Bollywood celebrities as Brand Ambassador
In the year 2012, Yepme launched its women’s apparel and made Kangana Ranaut as the style ambassador for the women’s collection. Also, in April 2014, Yepme appointed Farhan Akhtar as a Brand Ambassador for promotion of their website and products. In order to attract more customers, in June 2014, Sonu Sood was appointed as the brand ambassador for leading their online shopping portal.
Esha Gupta, Bollywood actress and model, in June 2014, was appointed as brand ambassador to endorse women wear of Yepme. Later on in Dec 2014, it was followed by Shahrukh Khan as new brand ambassador.
9. Competitors
Yepme faces competition from the main challengers who are in similar industry of online private label branding like Freecultr and Zovi. However, Yepme is far ahead than any other in terms of popularity and sales because of their business strategy.
Some of the factors which strengthens Yepme are:
- Better Buying experience
- High range of products
- Quick resolution of queries
- On-time delivery of products
Learnings
Yepme is one of the leading industries and has certain milestones. There are certain positive factors that make Yepme.com a successful startup and separate it from its competitors. It includes their unique business strategy, multi-channel marketing, and understanding of the market conditions.
What changes should Yepme make in their business strategies after Flipkart’s Myntra acquired Jabong?
After reading your article, My reaction was like that. What ?? Is it real report ? Yepme really have 61,35,272 ? and I checked yepme page on facebook. After seeing yepme Facebook page i came to know yepme has 6,787,097 Facebook fans. I am feeling glad. Yepme becomes the very good way for getting inspiration.
Thanks Sakshi!!
I’m glad Sonal you liked it. Definitely Yepme has become an inspiration for startups today. Your curiosity has helped us know more about the current status of Yepme’s Facebook Fans!