Myntra, one of India’s leading fashion, beauty and lifestyle ecommerce destinations, has introduced conversational AI-powered chatbot, Maya, to make customers’ shopping experience more seamless and customised, while helping them expedite their decision making. With its elevated capability, Myntra’s virtual fashion influencer, Maya, transcends serving fashion inspiration on social media, to now also extending AI-backed shopping assistance on the app. The feature’s remarkable ability to streamline discovery and refine choices for customers, effectively eliminating any ambiguity, is poised to enhance customers’ shopping experience, starting this festive season. Available on the Myntra app and launched right ahead of Myntra’s annual marquee festive event, Big Fashion Festival (BFF), this cutting-edge chatbot is all set to assist users in navigating through Myntra’s wide assortment of styles by answering some of their specific and relatively intricate queries, while being contextually aware.
Maya is smart and intuitive, and excels at understanding customers’ specific requirements. She offers relevant product recommendations from 2.3 million styles across fashion, beauty, footwear and home categories listed on Myntra, ensuring that customers find precisely what they’re looking for. In addition, Maya is capable of engaging in conversational shopping, adeptly handling a wide range of complex queries from customers. For example: ‘My friend’s birthday is coming up next Sunday and I want to gift a grooming kit to him’, or ‘What should I wear for a Saturday night club party? Think neon and bold prints!’ Maya starts asking follow-up questions to help streamline the query to then intelligently curate product options that align with the user’s specific request. Being contextually aware enables Maya to provide recommendations to customers based on the multiple conversations that occurred in the same session, responding in real time. In this way, Maya elevates the conversational experience by offering unparalleled convenience, making it a valuable tool for customers seeking tailored product recommendations and minimizing decision time while shopping.
Powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the feature harnesses its query understanding and conversational capabilities. Maya takes the user experience to a whole new level by offering search, based on one’s more natural style of texting, aided by its ChatGPT foundation and Myntra’s in-house cataloguing and search technology, which is aligned with customers’ newer ways of shopping and interaction. Customers can ask multiple questions, similar to how they would ask a sales assistant, and Maya will serve in real-time to ensure their fashion needs are met.
To begin with, the feature is being introduced to 10% of Myntra’s user base, with the plan to gradually expand its availability to a larger audience in the near future. The existing focus of the feature is set on providing relevant results to consumers and will be extended to perform additional tasks like summarizing ratings and reviews, assisting with size selection, gaining voice and image capabilities and much more, in the future. Additionally, there are plans in the pipeline for Maya to support vernacular language, increasing its significance in tier-2 and 3 cities. The feature also has safeguards in place to prevent misuse, such as responding only to relevant inputs on the platform. Users of the Myntra app can engage with Maya from the explore button on the homepage of the app.
Speaking on the launch, Raghu Krishnananda – Chief Product and Technology Officer, Myntra, said, “The introduction of our AI-powered shopping assistant, Maya, marks a significant milestone in our journey to elevate the shopping experience of millions of fashion-forward shoppers in the country by providing a conversational interface to our users. As the festive season kicks-in, we eagerly look forward to our customers engaging with Maya, with the confidence that their quest for finding the perfect fashion and lifestyle needs will be met with enhanced convenience.”
The introduction also compliments a comprehensive suite of AI-powered tech features introduced by Myntra this year, such as My Stylist and MyFashionGPT that puts the organisation at the helm of steering the world of fashion into the future, via pioneering innovations. With this rollout, the company expects over 20% of Myntra’s user base to engage with Maya in the next few months.
Myntra is geared up to deliver a joyous festive season this year with its Big Fashion Festival. During the event, customers will have access to unmissable offers on thousands of domestic and international brands, as well as additional 15% off on using Myntra’s co-branded credit card in association with Kotak Mahindra Bank, to unlock more value on their festive purchases.
