Amazon India has signed an exclusive tie-up with Aditya Birla owned fabric and ready-mades brand Grasim to retail Grasim's readymade shirts and special suiting/shirting gift packs on its marketplace. This is the latest initiative by Amazon to strengthen its fashion offerings against competitor Flipkart that had acquired Myntra in May this year. With the acquisition, Flipkart had claimed (and still claims) to be the market leader in the fashion category, which is currently one of the fastest growing verticals for e-commerce sites. Future Group alliance: While Amazon India entered the fashion category quite late, it now seems to be ramping up its offerings via exclusive tie-ups with prominent offline & online brands. Last month, it signed a strategic alliance with Future Group to sell products from the latter's portfolio of 40 fashion brands including Lee Cooper, Converse, Indigo Nation, Scullers and Jealous 21 among others last month. The alliance also includes exploring co-branding opportunities, improving product development in categories that is currently not served by Future Group and promoting existing and new brands in the market. Last week, Amazon also partnered Label Corp that operates several celebrity endorsed private labels. As part of the deal, Amazon will be offering apparel like dresses, tops and bottoms from Malaika Arora Khan's The Closet Label and fashion products like bags, jewelry and shoes from Bipasha Basu's The Trunk Label. There have also been talks of Amazon looking to acquire Rocket Internet-backed Jabong, although we feel this is unlikely considering that Jabong was recently merged into a roll-up of emerging markets focused fashion e-commerce brands called Global…
