As the nation grapples with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic through the lockdown, LimeRoad, one of India’s leading independent fashion platform, has launched a new Financial Clinic to provide assistance to thousands of seller partners who are currently facing financial challenges as a result of the uncertainty.
The mission of the Clinic is to help provide financial assistance to seller partners by addressing their immediate financial challenges and helping them set long-term goals as markets recover from this crisis.
The leadership team at LimeRoad was working on building this program for the past few months. The launch was accelerated given the current distress triggered by COVID-19. The Clinic will focus squarely on the company’s small and medium-scale sellers, essentially manufactures for the domestic market and exports, and provide them with solutions around a variety of issues including operational and fixed cost management, inventory and working capital management, access to short term credit etc.
The Financial Clinic was launched on April 3, 2020 with a seller partner who had quarantined himself at his warehouse.
“When there is an outside expert working on the financial books of any Company, it helps in getting a different perspective with a clear scope of improvement. We are delighted that LimeRoad is offering us this help,” said the first seller partner who availed the services of the Financial Clinic.
“This pandemic will reshape our industry. It will impact consumer behavior, encouraging more and more people to move from offline to online, as was seen post SARS in China. Globally, all industries will divide up into winner and losers, and it is our belief that our Seller Partners, along with us, will be on the winning side. In a recent briefing, Bain & Co. projected that online fashion is one of the few sectors which will see a huge surge in demand between 3-6m, reflecting pent-up demand, stabilising at higher levels by 12m, after a deep cut in the first 3 months. The next 3 months will be painful for everyone, and it is our mission to be as helpful as possible to our seller partners through this period,” said Suchi Mukherjee, Founder CEO, LimeRoad.
Recently, the Clothing Manufacturers Association of India (CMAI) reported that the global impact of COVID-19 will negatively impact exports thereby resulting in potentially 50 lakh jobs in the apparel sector. LimeRoad works with over 10,000 apparel manufacturers across the country, and will be extending the Clinic to 1,000 seller partners in phase 1 of the rollout.
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