KVIC has decided to aggressively pursue registrations across the world with 41 applications already filed, and the UAE and Mexico being among the latest countries to recognise its logo and brand. From Japan and Nepal to Myanmar and Brazil, KVIC is seeking to protect its brand.

KVIC’s efforts to safeguard Khadi from any misuse have yielded significant results and helped Khadi’s sales grow by a big margin in last few years. Khadi’s trademark registrations are essentially to prevent khadi from duplication and safeguard the interest of its artisans, says Vinai Kumar Saxena, Chairman, KVIC.

A few years ago, KVIC found itself in a peculiar situation when it discovered that a German entity Natural Products(BNP) has got rights on Khadi and related marks in the European Union and other countries. A source said BNP has now expressed its willingness to settle the trademark disputes amicably.

Revenue growth in India’s organized retail sector is expected to slowdown to 15-20 per cent against the earlier projection of 35 per cent, says CRISIL. Temporary store closures, restricted mobility, and curtailed discretionary spending will be the main reasons for this slowdown. The report estimates operating margin of apparel retailers to remain moderate at 4-5 per cent for this fiscal, compared to earlier expectation of 7-8 per cent.

Retailers may have to take recourse to additional debt to plug near-term cash-flow mismatches, which could impact their credit quality.CRISIL-rated apparel retailers are expected to be better placed due to strengthen balance sheets, supported by equity raise of Rs 2,000 crore made last fiscal. To clear inventory and attract footfalls, retailers may offer higher discounts, especially during initial months of store reopening, and this could impact profitability. However, renegotiation of rental arrangements and trimming of employee cost, which together account for 20 per cent revenue, will help keep operating margin at 4-5 per cent this fiscal, a slight improvement over 3-4 per cent last fiscal, but much below the pre-pandemic level of 9 per cent.

SK Ray, Charge d’Affaires, Embassy of India to Poland, opines, Indian apparel exporters have a huge opportunity to increase their presence in the Polish supermarkets and hypermarkets.

Ray recently addressed a large gathering of Polish buyers and Indian apparel exporters at a virtual B2B meeting on ‘India-Poland Synergies in Apparel & Textiles’, jointly organized by Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) and the Indian Embassy in Poland.

He said, Poland serves as a textile hub for export to other European Union countries. However, Polish consumers are not very brand loyal. They prefer to shop in hypermarkets and supermarkets. Though mostly price-driven, they have now become conscious about design, quality and style.

This offers Indian exporters a huge opportunity to enhance their engagement in the Polish textile sector. Poland can serve as a major hub for textiles and Indian companies can supply in a large way to the Polish supermarkets and hypermarkets, Ray added.

The country’s largest e-commerce companies, including Flipkart, Amazon India and Tata Group, have told the government that they are concerned about the ‘related-party clause” in the draft regulations for the industry that can prevent them from selling on their online platforms.

Top executives and industry groupings such as FICCI, CII, IAMAI and Assocham also flagged their disquiet over the proposal to not allow an e-commerce platform from using its name in its private brand at the meeting organized by the department of consumer affairs and Invest India, sources said.

There was a broad consensus that the data-related proposals should be included only in the upcoming Personal Data Protection Bill and not be made part of the proposed e-commerce regulations, they added.

Citing the “exhaustive and confusing“ nature of the draft e-commerce rules, the industry is seeking time until the end of July to submit their views.

The industry associations are expected to make a formal request to the government seeking more time and further discussion.

Multi-brand luxury Indian fashion retailer Pernia’s Pop Up Shop has launched a dedicated pop-up shopping event at its store in Bandra, Mumbai to showcase womenswear designer Jayanti Reddy’s latest collection.

As per Fashion Network, the showcase features Jayanti Reddy’s bridal couture for the summer wedding season. A selection of ethnic wear styles is also available to shop. Customers can attend by booking an appointment ahead of time to ensure health and safety protocol can be followed.

June also saw Jayanti Reddy launch its latest couture collection with glittering lehengas, metallic details, and voluminous, ruffled blouses. With a jewel toned and champagne colour palette, the collection is a defiant, opulent response to a year of lockdowns.

Pernia’s Pop-Up Shop has also launched a sale event at its store in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad featuring over 25,000 styles from over 400 Indian designer brands. The ‘Big 2021 Blowout’ launched on Thursday and runs until July 11.

High Street Essentials, the parent company of clothing brands FabAlley and Indya plans to launch its brands into new international markets including Germany and Australia through online tie-ups and focusing on online expansion in the near future.

As per Fashion Network, this year, High Street Essentials will launch its brands on Germany-based online platform Zaland The business has also partnered with Australia-based online platform Iconic to retail in the region. The business recently began retailing its clothing lines in Dubai on online platform Namshi, in Southeast Asia with Singapore-based business Zalora, and in the US with Amazon.

The company has decided to hold its expansion of brick-and-mortar stores due to the pandemic. It plans to increase its store count from the current 33 to 50.

Consulting firm RedSeer projects the annual gross merchandise value (GMV) of Indian online retail will increase to $350 billion by CY2030 from $38 billion in CY2030. In CY2021, the GMV is expected to increase to $55 billion. Nearly 90 per cent of online shoppers expected to be added between 2020-30 will come from Tier II+ cities. The sector will witness over $7 billion cumulative incremental online retail transactions from Tier II+ customers, while more than $150 billion cumulative incremental online retail GMV will be added from Tier II+ customers over CY 2020-2030.

Some factors to drive this growth for the next few years include companies’ focus on Tier II markets, lower costs of servicing small city markets, growing online spend by ‘digital natives,’ supply-side innovations, and the outbreak of the pandemic that has deepened e-commerce beyond metros.

India’s consumer digital economy including all large consumer facing sectors like travel, ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce etc is expected to grow to a $800 billion market by 2030. Kiranas are expected to achieve approximate $1.5 trillion sales by CY2030 driven by platforms that are digitizing these start-ups.

Walmart-owned e-commerce firm Flipkart has launched an app called ‘Shopsy’ which it claims will help create entrepreneurs in India with zero investment.

As per Fashion Network, the app will offer users access to catalogues of a wide selection of 15 crore products offered by Flipkart sellers across fashion, beauty, among others to potential customers via popular social media and messaging apps.

Flipkart’s Shopsy model is similar to Shopify, which helps businesses set up online stores. In Shopsy, Flipkart will act as a channel between the seller and the reseller. With Shopsy, Flipkart aims to enable over 25 million online entrepreneurs by 2023 as they reap the benefits of digital commerce. Entrepreneurs now will utilize Flipkart's catalogue, established delivery networks, and infrastructure to bring reliability and speed. These benefits will help them enhance the end consumers' experience, which in turn help them grow their business, says Prakash Sikaria, Senior Vice President, Flipkart.

Flipkart has been investing heavily in India amid COVID-19 disruptions coupled with protests by traders to maintain its market dominance in the Indian e-commerce market.

Net loss of Future Consumer declined to Rs 155.12 crore during the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2021, compared to that of Rs 175.46 crore in the year-ago quarter. The company’s revenue from FMCG arm, FCL declined 59.2 per cent to Rs 386.26 crore during January-March 2021 compared to Rs 947.07 crore in January-March 2020. Its total expenses declined by 52.5 per cent to Rs 500.06 crore, against Rs 1,051.87 crore in the year-ago period.

For the full fiscal year, which ended on March 31, 2021, FCL reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 483.30 crore against a net loss of Rs 216.50 crore in the previous year. Revenue from operations declined by 70.7 per cent to t Rs 1,184.51 crore in FY 2020-21 compared to Rs 4,040.33 crore in FY2019-20. The company had to face adverse impact on operations and sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the Group's major customers had to invoke the force majeure clause and claim losses on inventory due to expiry/deterioration in the quality of the goods as either the stores were closed or experiencing very low footfalls.