From online to physical retail, how Indiatimes Lifestyle Network is evolving into a commerce platform

Times Group is all set to diversify and expand its business to hard consumer products category. The media conglomerate, through its Indiatimes Lifestyle Network property, which owns brands such as Indiatimes, MensXP, iDiva and What’s Hot, has already ventured into full-fledged commerce by launching e-retail for men’s beauty and lifestyle products on its digital content platform MensXP.

The company now plans to do replicate the move on its other content platform iDiva, which is massively popular on social media platforms for its quirky content.

The product category on iDiva is likely to be female-focused. The company is also planning to set up physical touchpoints at spas and salons across the country to promote its product line and has ambitions to set up its own retail stores.

With MensXP Mud already becoming the hottest selling brand on the platform, ILN is in process of launching 15 more private labels, other than exclusively hosting products line of various other entrepreneurs.

Angad Bhatia, Chief Operating Officer, Indiatimes Lifestyle Network, told BuzzInContent.com that ILN’s foray into content commerce will be very different from other platforms who are trying to achieve the same. “For most content publishers, it’s an ancillary business stream. If you look at ScoopWhoop, they have already shut down their commerce operations. For PopXO, their entire commerce operation is outsourced to a single vendor.”

He said Times Internet, in the last one year, invested a lot on building an e-retail chain for the business. “To be able to create a marketplace of unique offerings, we spent last one year in setting up warehouses, delivery and logistics teams, hired best resources from top MNCs to head operations of the e-commerce business. We are building a very aggressive operations ecosystem at Times,” Bhatia added.

Talking about the marketing of the consumer products business, Bhatia said ILN would mainly rely on internal assets.

“We feel that with the data we have, we can really create a very sustained and attractive media and commerce universe,” he said.

Bhatia said that Times Internet has a battery of popular social media influencers who are the face of the brands. The company would utilise them to push commerce as well.

“We have built a robust video ecosystem around all of our brands at Times. We are among the top social media video players in the country. There are only a hand full organised networks who are very active in the market — filtercopy, The Viral Fever and ILN. We at ILN work very closely with the creators and influencers and we have built an ecosystem for these influencers where they are the faces for our brands. We are going to build more on that on commerce as well,” Bhatia added.

Asked if the objective of Times Internet was always to foray into commerce while it developed these content platforms over the last few years, Bhatia said, “We always knew that it is a type of content category, which has a very high affinity to purchase. We have always felt that the journey for the consumer has always been broken. Whether a consumer is trying to search the best list of products through Google, or getting a recommendation around products, the underlined aspects towards this content consumption is the inherent need that consumers have to purchase.”

He said the company wants to close the purchase journey loop through its e-commerce foray, which in future could potentially be into physical retail touchpoints as well.

“Our mission has always been to close that loop. Today, we feel that we are a step closer to that. Tomorrow, we are likely getting into retail. We are potentially going to have touchpoints around spas and salons in the country.”

How’s MensXP commerce play panning out?

ILN is currently testing its e-commerce play through MenXP platform.

“We launched shop about four weeks back with over 50 direct to consumer brands in the fashion and beauty space and more than a dozen of them are exclusively hosted on MensXP. Because we have so much data, we launched a brand called MensXP Mud which is India’s first make up brand for men. Our first product for that range was a men’s BB Crème, which is the hottest selling product at the shop right now,” Bhatia said. “Mud will go to more than 60 retail outlets in the next one month. We also have the ambition to create our own stores. These men only stores will host private labels as well as partner brands.”

He said the current TG of the brand is the audience that comes to the platform on its own. MensXP claims to have 13-15 mn unique users on the platform directly every month. Besides that, 25-30 mn social traffic comes to the brand.

On how ILN is creating demand for the shop, Bhatia said, “We have our own marketing channels. MensXP itself has a massive reach. We have very strong capabilities in content production, including video and tech. It is an amalgamation of those functions which is essentially going to use the media we have created on MensXP to evangelise our own brands and to create demand for shop.”

MensXP, which was acquired by Times Internet seven years ago, claims to the largest men’s brand in the country. “Its nearest competitor like GQ is 1/50th of MensXP on all metrics. It is a clear cut market leader in the media space. We are going to leverage that brand’s authenticity and the influence it has been able to build with Indian millennial men to be able to increase our touchpoints manifold,” Bhatia added.