New Delhi, 09 January 2024: The Souled Store, India’s largest online brand for officially licensed merchandise, today announced a partnership with Simpl – India’s foremost Checkout Network, to strengthen its e-commerce platform to provide an enhanced e-commerce experience as millions of customers make Direct-to-Customer (D2C) platforms their primary fashion retail channel.

Through this partnership, consumers can access lakhs of official merchandise, available on The Souled Store platform (App & Website) through Simpl’s 1-Tap Checkout. This judicious mix of The Souled Store’s wide selection of products, delivered across the country, combined with Simpl’s 1-Tap convenience, will play a crucial role in enabling a seamless e-commerce experience for customers while enhancing conversions, minimizing transaction failures, cash-on-delivery transactions, and reducing product returns which are important pain points for the industry.

Speaking of the partnership, Vedang Patel, Co-Founder of The Souled Store, said, “The Pop fashion ecosystem in India is maturing at a rapid pace with millions of customers from across the country taking to e-commerce and D2C platforms to fulfill their evolving fashion needs. As a customer-focused platform, we felt the need to provide greater convenience to our customers, particularly millennials and Gen Z, across the board for whom e-commerce has become the primary retail channel. In this endeavor, we are delighted to partner with Simpl to offer a 1-Tap Checkout for lakhs of our merchandise to over seven million of our customers across the country. With Simpl, we find synergies in our collective vision of empowering customers through greater convenience online quickly and seamlessly.”

The Souled Store generates over 90% of its sales through its e-commerce platform, necessitating the need to enhance customer experience on its platform. The company experienced a 5X growth compared to the average business during the Black Friday sale last November. The top demands were in the winter wear categories, followed by oversized t-shirts and denims.

Speaking of the partnership, Nitya Sharma, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Simpl, said, “Fashion e-commerce marketplaces and Direct-to-Customer platforms are becoming the primary retail channels for new age customers who are looking for a more convenient and hassle-free way of accessing products online. Simpl, as an organisation, is committed to bringing enhanced convenience and building customers’ trust on merchants online through its proprietary 1-Tap Checkout. We are delighted to partner with The Souled Store, which is one of the early movers in the D2C space, to enhance the checkout experience of millions of their customers across the country. This partnership also expands our presence in the fashion e-commerce sector with hundreds of merchants serving millions of customers, choosing Simpl as their preferred checkout partner checkout”.

Currently, thousands of small, medium, and large fashion, accessory, and beauty merchants across the country use Simpl’s 1-Tap Checkout and Simpl Checkout solutions. They have witnessed over a 70x increase in transactions, respectively, over the last 1 year. Overall, over 26,000 merchants and millions of customers across the country opt for Simpl’s Checkout options to increase conversions, reduce returns, and enhance convenience.

According to a joint report by Bain&Co and TMRW, Fashion is one of the largest and fastest-growing categories online, driven largely by Gen Z customers. The total contribution of e-commerce to fashion is expected to increase to 30% over the next five years from the current 10-12%. This growth will propel the size of the fashion e-commerce market in India, currently around $8-10 billion, to approximately $30 billion, growing at a rate of 35% in the next five years. This spells immense opportunities for D2C merchants looking to reach out to millions of young customers across the country by enabling quick and easy checkout through Simpl’s 1-Tap Checkout.