H&M sales increasing in India, brand hopes for greater ease of doing business for further expansion

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Aug 20, 2019

H&M is seeing its India sales increase with a reported 39% year-on-year jump to Rs 380 crore ($57 million) in the previous quarter. The business hopes for greater ease of doing business to aid its future expansion plans. 

“We are very open to invest more in India,” H&M’s managing director Fredrik Olsson told ET Bureau in an interview on Monday. “It is about how do you build a stronger business… If policies or setups could be a little bit easier, more of the investments could go directly into improvements for customers and that will grow the business faster.”

Olsson, who was in India to launch H&M’s new online partnership with Myntra, said that ease of doing business in India could be significantly improved if the central government reduced the number of licences necessary to open a brick-and-mortar store in the country. Stores often require over a dozen licences to open legally which creates extra costs and takes time. 

H&M’s country manager for India, Janne Einola, also told ET Bureau that ease of doing business should be increased. “It's a very heavy admin work and very costly, and…these kinds of things also scare foreign investors,” said Einola.

“That's why I believe that it's good that the FDI rules are now discussed to ease them, but also the ease of doing business needs to be looked at.”

The business suggested digitising the licensing process to make it easier for businesses.

H&M has a current India store count of 42 and has reported over Rs 1,100 crore in annual sales for the past four years. As well as now retailing on Flipkart’s online fashion platform Myntra, H&M also recently launched its own e-commerce site in India.