When we designed around one of the hottest global fashion trends " California Girl" with a nod to the summer beach season this year, we knew metro audiences will find an appeal in this stylish gold jewellery collection which is hippie and happy. We also saw Seeta Rani from Kesinga, Odisha a village with a population of less than 20,000 buy a pendant at Rs. 18,000 ($256) from this collection. We see this behaviour over and over again. We see that all over India from metros to Tier 4 towns and even Rural India.
India is a predominantly middle class country with 80% of households set to become middle class by 2030 from the current 50%. We are also rapidly urbanising. 590 million people would be living in Urban India from the current 340 million. We are also seeing rapid westernisation with international brands growing in India -both in reach and sales. Instagram is leading the vanguard in making everyone everywhere aspire to a better, more fashionable lifestyle.
Yet Indians are some of the most value seeking customers on the planet! They want aspirational brands at accessible price points. Across categories they will demand more and more of such brands as they go about becoming global citizens. Brands like Melorra are well positioned to serve their needs.
In the summer of 2018, we decided to expand our delivery capability to all the pin codes in India. We now can serve 6,50,000 cities, towns, villages and meet the rising aspirations of the youngest population in the world. We took this step because everyday we used to be flooded with enquiries from small towns which we didnt deliver to. We were not sure if these were serious enquiries. Guess what? These consumers were dead serious. As soon as we increased our market coverage with COD facility we have been seeing tremendous growth from small towns. From serving 150 towns by April 2018 in two years of existence, we have grown to serving nearly 1000 towns a year later. In the month of March alone we added 134 towns. Compare that to the fact that the market leader in jewellery is in 155 cities after being around for 22 years. We are seeing the true power of being online.
We are just scratching the surface.