Ajay Rao: Marketplaces today demand complete digitisation for every shipment

Emiza has a deep subject matter expertise warehousing and order fulfilment for over 150+ Direct-to- Consumer (D2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) brands, across a broad spectrum, right from beauty, personal care and cosmetics, fashion and lifestyle, to electronics and appliances, home and kitchen and food and nutrition. Ajay Rao, Founder & CEO of Emiza, in this interview with Divya Shetty, discusses the company’s operations and shares insights on how brands can reimagine and strengthen their logistics strategies.

Can you give us an idea of how Emiza works?

The fashion and textile supply chain is a crucial element, and Emiza plays a pivotal role in bringing products from the manufacturer to the end consumer. We are an omni-channel platform that helps brands sell across multiple platforms—offline, online, and quick commerce.

Today, brands need to stay relevant by being available across all these formats, with inventory visibility everywhere and the ability to deliver to customers in the shortest time possible. Our role is to enable brands to sell across multiple channels and geographies, providing a full stack of solutions to reach their end consumers.

Our journey begins when brands send their inventory to our warehouses—either one or multiple, depending on their distribution strategy. Once received, we make that inventory live. In fashion, the most crucial element is quality control (QC) since return rates are high. We perform QC to minimise unforeseen returns.

We offer end-to-end solutions—from QC to inverting the product, making inventory live across multiple channels, fulfilling single or bulk orders, and ensuring last-mile delivery. We also manage the reverse logistics—handling returns, checking for fraud or damage, refurbishing products when possible, and helping brands raise claims for damaged goods.

Essentially, we manage the entire forward journey, inventory, and returns. The key pain points for brands are inventory management and returns, as that’s where the difference between profit and loss lies. If a brand manages inventory well and minimises return losses, it becomes profitable—and that’s where we play a pivotal role.

Emiza has recently partnered with Raymond. How is this collaboration different from other partnerships with fashion brands?

Many of the fashion brands we work with are consumer-first B2C brands that already understand the online ecosystem. Raymond, however, is a traditional brand transitioning from offline to online. Given their strong brand equity and the scale they expect online, they needed a partner equipped to handle both scale and complexity.

We’ve activated warehouses for Raymond across four key cities in India, managing everything from warehousing to packaging materials, as packaging requirements vary across platforms like Flipkart, Amazon, and Myntra.

We also provide Raymond with a complete technology stack—from order receipt, routing, and fulfillment to integration with their enterprise SAP platform. Since they’re a listed company, financial accounting and reporting are critical, so we’ve built the reporting and automation tools needed for that.

Additionally, Raymond wants to leverage its strong retail footprint by using store inventory for online orders. We’ve developed logic for order routing, store-level fulfillment, and claims management—offering them a complete end-to-end solution. Unlike many other brands who take selective services, Raymond has opted for the full-stack solution.

What lessons have you learned from the Raymond partnership that can be applied to other fashion and textile brands?

We’ve brought our tried and tested model to Raymond, so there was confidence from their side. The main learning has been in execution—particularly inventory planning and optimisation.

As Raymond scales up, they’re realising some imbalances, like higher demand in certain regions but inventory concentration elsewhere. Our data platform and control tower help provide real-time insights into inventory placement, enabling better optimisation.

Since the partnership began recently and coincided with the seasonal spike, we’re still in the early stages. But going forward, better inventory planning will be a key focus. With a stable and reliable platform now in place, Raymond’s next step is scaling their business two to three times with the support of an optimised supply chain.

Fashion brands are investing heavily in agile back-end operations. From your experience, what are the top three priorities for textile brands when modernising their fulfillment infrastructure?

The first priority is returns and claim management. Marketplaces today demand complete digitisation and video documentation for every shipment. Earlier, claims involved manual email trails and CCTV footage. Now, marketplaces want live access to digital records, enabling faster claim resolution.

The second priority is adapting to quick commerce. Fashion, with its diverse SKUs, doesn’t naturally fit into quick commerce. Brands must revamp warehouse networks and layouts to leverage quick commerce efficiently without bloating inventory.

The third priority is return reduction using AI and data analytics. Brands are using data to identify patterns—like repeat return customers or SKUs with high return rates—and block or manage such orders proactively to minimise losses.

You mentioned providing data insights to Raymond. How is Emiza leveraging automation, data analytics, or AI to help textile brands streamline inventory and order processing?

The main metric brands track is inventory turns—how often inventory cycles through in a year. When brands operate across multiple warehouses, getting a unified inventory view is challenging. We’ve solved that by bringing all channel and warehouse data into a single real-time dashboard, enabling smarter planning and purchase decisions.

We’ve also automated the claims process—claims are raised automatically, followed up, and settled faster. These automation and data-driven tools help brands optimise inventory, reduce manual intervention, and improve operational efficiency.

Are you using artificial intelligence in your operations?

Yes, to some extent. Our live operations are largely transaction-driven, but we use AI internally to improve efficiency—like determining optimal manpower for each shift or reorganising warehouse layouts for faster picking and packing.

While AI forecasting isn’t yet fully reliable (since forecasts depend on external, unpredictable variables), AI is valuable for pattern recognition and process optimisation. We use it to reduce labor dependency, improve space utilisation, and enhance internal efficiencies—ultimately translating into cost savings for brands.

Store-based order routing is gaining momentum. What’s the rationale behind this approach, and how does it benefit textile brands with a strong retail footprint?

It’s a natural evolution. If a brand already has stores across the country, leveraging that existing inventory makes sense. It improves revenue per square foot, as the same inventory serves both offline and online orders.

Fulfilling from nearby stores also reduces delivery time and cost, and faster deliveries lower the chances of returns. However, there are challenges—store staff often prioritise in-store customers, leading to delays in dispatching online orders. Brands must ensure stores are adequately staffed and equipped to handle online fulfillment and returns efficiently.

The world is becoming increasingly conscious of sustainability. What steps is Emiza taking to reduce its carbon footprint and adopt greener logistics practices?

There are two key areas—energy consumption and packaging materials.

In packaging, most marketplaces are transitioning from plastic to paper, which naturally reduces plastic usage. Within our warehouses, we recycle materials from returned shipments—our machines convert returned boxes into packing filler, giving waste packaging a second life.

We’ve also implemented solar energy across several of our large warehouses, some exceeding 100,000 sq ft. Currently, we generate nearly 60 per cent of our energy requirement through solar, significantly cutting down our carbon footprint.