new delhi tatas ecommerce portal tata cliq approaches its one year mark this month and plans to introduce bigger brands for its consumers this year having introduced the concept of phygital retail tata cliq refrained from adopting the popular etail format of discounting and offers something the industry now seems to be moving away from while increasingly shifting towards omnichannel as the path to survive and succeed taking its approach a step further tatacliqcom recently announced the addition of vertical leaders who will further strengthen the team that takes the brand to the next level ceo ashutosh pandey spoke about the process of tata cliqs phygital journey while we were developing this concept a lot of questions about whether this business will be viable were raised at that time we had three big assumptions the first was that indians will always be hungry for brands because india was an aspirational society second we found that the consumer was moving seamlessly both digitally and physically as they were consuming brands online and offline and thirdly we realised in india organized retail has a specific speed of growth and because of physical constraints it was slowing down he said he stated that online will always be a force that will multiply but when we researched all over the world we realised that ecommerce comes in different stages we developed the concept of a phygital marketplace where we were not just online and certainly not an only offline entity we became the glue that tied big brands to their offline stores we wanted to be the bridge for customers to shop online and for brands who wanted to offer customers the convenience of online while not investing too much offline he said pandey admitted it to being fairly ambitious model because no one had attempted it before we spent the last one year laying the foundation and perfecting the formula he said at the end of the year we were convinced about going phygital the customer was miles ahead than retailers as her journey went through both online and offline channels tata cliq has over 1000 stores which are phygitallyintegrated across 150 brands we have become the preferred partners for over 800 brands and our portal is much more brandcentric than others many of the brands have their dedicated brand pages and we encourage customers to move through their websites as well pandey said around 50 of the 800 brands that tata cliq houses are exclusive pandey spoke about the problems they faced initially with sales in the first month we used to sell only a few pieces a day and we did think about whether it was going to work or not but we stuck to the model and we now sell more than 1000 pieces a day also our customers are not very pricesensitive and hence our focus has been on popular premium and premiumplus brands he said this year will be about adding multiple categories and features it will be