Tata Trent to build its own trend-focused apparel chain like Zara

Tata Group has been Inditex SAs partner for Zara in India. Now, the country’s largest conglomerate is building its own apparel empire as trend-focused as Zara -- but at half the price. Trent, the retail arm of the Tata Group is building its own apparel chain. The target audience is the trend-conscious and globalised consumer but whose low average incomes means that clothing from Zara is still mostly out of reach. The brand has fine tuned its local supply chain to deliver “extreme fast fashion" which can get runway styles to customers in just 12 days, the same compressed timeline as Inditex.

Trent hopes that its quick and responsive supply chain will help it become as ubiquitous in Asia’s third-largest economy as Zara is in the West. But it’ll need to fend off competition from both local brick-and-mortar stores as well as e-commerce giants to do so. Trent also plans to open 40 outlets of its flagship Westside chain every year and hundreds of its mass market Zudio stores. The brand plans to target a consumer population that is newly trend-conscious and globalised, but has low average income.