Reliance Industries is planning to partner with Shein to bring the quickly expanding Chinese retailer back to India in an effort to corner the $10 billion domestic online fashion market, say reports.
According to reports, Reliance will tie up with Shein three years after India banned the online retailer’s app in its attempt to freeze out Chinese companies in retaliation for border clashes. The low-cost offering helps India's largest publicly traded company by market capitalization in its fight to rule the nation's $10 billion online fashion retail sector by 2022, according to analyst projections.
As part of the licence agreement, which was recently approved by the government, Shein would receive a percentage of profits from its fast fashion sales in India, people familiar with the deal said.
Reliance has deals with high-end brands like Balenciaga and Burberry and it has roughly 13,000 physical stores selling reasonably priced clothing all over India.
“Reliance’s other international brand partnerships are more premium, being luxury or designer brands,” said Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of consultant Third Eyesight. “India is still a relatively low per-capita-income economy. The bigger opportunity is in brands which are euphemistically called value brands, and that’s where Shein is positioned.”