In-house bot powers Myntra's home brand

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
— Peter Drucker

Myntra, one of India’s largest online fashion portals, has gone a step further in pairing  products on its platform with customer requirements with the launch of its home brand ModaRapido.

At a time when eCommerce players are indulging their customers extensively so as to serve them better, the new brand marks its entry powered by Myntra’s in-house smart bot Artie which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to gather insights about current trends in fashion, and thereby enables the design and production of trending products.

“Artie is a step towards understanding the consumer a little better,” says Gautam Kotamraju, SVP of New Initiatives at  Myntra.

The AI platform, which was developed by a team of 25 at Myntra, scans products on sale and best-selling products on a real-time basis to understand what people are buying. This would enable fashion developers to cater to customers more efficiently.

“There are two aspects to it, data sensing and data analysis. While scanning and compiling information on the products on sale and frequently selling products would account for data sensing, the next step of data analysis is where we try to understand the logic behind sales. The latter is integral to the process,” said Kotamraju explaining how there could be many reasons for a product to be popular.

The platform, which was developed over eight months, is currently in its pilot phase. ModaRapido has around 120 options under the brand, a number which is set to reach 200 in 10-15 days.

“So far the response has been amazing. While we are very happy with the response, we are also very cautious,” he said. At present the operations are at a very small-scale, we are constantly checking Artie’s accuracy, he added.

With Artie, the need for a designer’s involvement is minimum. “Although a designer is not really involved in the process, we do need a designer to add the ‘tadka’,” he said. Using the data from Artie, once a collection is decided upon, a designer curates it to look for similarities/differentiators and matches the designs with market trends.

Kotamraju said, “Right now we are at a reactionary deployment phase. Soon, when we are at a predictive deployment phase, the movement in fashion design and development is going to be revolutionary.” Apart from using Artie’s insights for ModaRapido, the company plans to share such information with its vendors and key partners to serve its customers better. 


THE Artie PROCESS

Scanning: Best-selling products are scanned on a real-time basis by the AI platform
Data Sensing: The scanned information is then compiled
Data Analysis: The platform tries to understand the logic behind sales
Curation: A designer looks at the identified collection, and matches the designs with market trends