Flipkart’s leading fashion arm , Myntra, has acquired Mumbai based end-to-end omni-channel retail platform Pretr, for an undisclosed sum.

Pretr which was founded by Bhavik Jhaveri and Ankur Joshi in 2016 , helps retailers with an array of services from enquiry, order management to analytics.

The acquisition by Myntra is being seen as a bid to further enhance the number of brands the ecommerce player makes available to its customers.

“ We at Myntra are very bullish about the opportunity to transform the industry by creating a seamless technology and operations backbone agnostic of channel,” said Ananya Tripathi, chief strategy officer, Myntra, said.

With the acquisition of Pretr, which currently has more than 40 brands, the company is looking to partner with 50 more brands within the next year across all its stores, enabling Myntra to offer a diversified product line.

Through the platform , Myntra’s customers will have a unified view of the brand’s inventory online and offline, while customers of the brands will be able to avail value added services such as same day delivery, click and collect, and return or exchange at the brand’s stores.

Brands, in turn will be able to increase their sales and improve inventory utilisation.

Myntra opened its first Roadster store in March of 2017 in Bengaluru, marking its foray into the brick and mortar space, and the company has been expanding aggressively ever since.

Over all, the company has four Mango brand stores, two Roadster stores and 15 more are in the pipeline this year. While the company plans to scale up Roadster, the fastest growing Myntra brand to 50 by 2002, it also plan for another 25 Mango stores and 15 Espirit stores in the same time.

The reason for the omnichannel bet is very clear. The strategy helps Myntra with its branding and boosts online sales fuelled by the offline presence.

Ananth Narayanan, chief executive officer, said "we are continuing to grow in the north of 40-50 percent range, both Myntra and Jabong platforms are doing well.

"Our new categories, such as personal care, are growing 400 percent year-on-year. So that has been great for us. This is expected to be a very good year, this is also the year, where I expect all of our stores to get critical mass, so the whole omnichannel focus will be big this year," he said.