E-commerce giant Flipkart on Monday (December 28) has announced that it has tied up with Viacom 18 to ease licensing for international brand. It came out with a new brand licensing initiative to ease the process for international brands entering India and offering consumers more authentic and branded merchandise.
In “a first-of-its-kind” arrangement in the industry, Flipkart has tied up with Viacom 18 for the licensing of three global brands - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spongebob Squarepants and Peanuts.
The Bangalore-based e-commerce firm said that 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 in India.
Manish Maheshwari, VP and head,Seller Ecosystem at Flipkart, said international brands that issue licences through the offline model face several challenges when it comes to sales reporting and product quality control, which in turn "heavily" impacts their royalty.
"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," he said.
"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 the company plans to extend its ecosystem with licensors on one side and thousands of high-quality sellers eligible to be licensees on the other side.
Last week, the e-commerce firm had partnered Italian organisation Pitti Immagine to launch fashion platform Trendstalk.
BW Reporters
The author is Senior Correspondent with BW Businessworld
