Domestic e-commerce major Flipkart on Monday announced the launch of a new brand licensing programme aimed at making it easier for international brands to enter India. The move is also targeted at offering authentic and branded merchandise to customers.
The Bengaluru-based online retailer has partnered with Viacom 18 to license three large brands — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spongebob Squarepants and Peanuts — to sellers.
"Global brands are constantly looking to partner with the most competent manufacturers across categories, and Flipkart wants to become the licensing platform that connects these brands to the most deserving sellers in India," it said.
Flipkart said brands' main concerns like fake products and absence of transparency on retail sales can be dealt with "effectively" with the company's "superior analytics system and the tight control" it maintains on product quality.
"Through this online licensing concept, we want to simplify this process by connecting international brands with the top-performing sellers on our platform, giving the brands the power to keep track of product sales as well as quality," PTI quoted Manish Maheshwari, VP and head - Seller Ecosystem, at Flipkart, as saying.
"It gives us great pride to introduce a concept like this for the first time in India where a global player can connect with Flipkart and have the product licensed across any number of sellers they want," he said.
Manish said international brands that grant licences through the "offline model" come across many challenges in sales reporting and maintain product quality, which will weigh on their royalty.
"For international brands, it's an opportunity to increase the number of brand touch-points through extensions into new verticals where the merchandise was previously not present," it said.
