NEW DELHI: Spanish fashion retailer Zara reported a 45.54% jump in its India profit for the year ended March, the company’s local partner in the market, Trent Ltd., said in its annual report for fiscal 2020 on Thursday. However, sales growth slowed down during the year.
Profit for the year was at ₹104 crore. In the previous year, Zara had posted a profit after tax of ₹71.49 crore.
For full year, revenues grew at their slowest pace, rising 9.2% to ₹1,570.54 crore.
Zara, with 22 stores in the country, primarily draws India’s affluent and fashion forward shoppers.
“During the year under review, the Zara entity recorded revenues of ₹1,570.54 crores and PAT of ₹104.05 crores," Trent Ltd., said in its FY20 annul report.
Inditex—one of the world’s largest fashion retailer that owns brands such as Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti globally—is present in India through two joint ventures with Tata Group’s retail arm Trent Ltd.
Inditex Trent Retail India, a 51:49 joint venture with Trent Ltd, runs the Zara business in India. The other runs Massimo Dutti stores in India through Massimo Dutti India Private Limited.
For the full year, Massimo Dutti—that operates 3 stores in the country—reported a 5.37% jump in FY20 revenues at ₹67 crore.
Zara has stores in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Surat, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Chennai, Mohali, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Gurgaon.
No new stores were added across the two brands during the year.
"The incremental store openings for Zara continues to be calibrated with focus on presence only in very high-quality retail spaces," Trent Ltd said.
Last month, Inditex said it will shut down 1,000-1,200 stores mostly in Asia and Europe across its portfolio of brands as it seeks to boost online sales.
Zara entered India in 2010, and competes with Swedish fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) that made its India debut in 2015.
H&M has since caught up with Zara, opening more stores and making its goods available on fashion portal Myntra.
For the year ended 30 November, 2019, H&M posted a 43% jump in sales to ₹1,490 crore, even as it opened fewer stores in the market and activated online sales though Myntra.
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