Scaling with Strategy: Trent CFO Neeraj Basur on Expansion, Differentiation & the Future of Indian Fashion Retail

Trent Ltd., the Tata Group company behind Westside and Zudio, has emerged as one of India’s strongest and most resilient growth stories in fashion and lifestyle retail. As the brand accelerates its footprint across metros and deeper markets, it continues to sharpen its differentiated operating model  anchored in own brands, speed-to-market capabilities  and omnichannel strength.

In an exclusive interaction, Neeraj Basur, Chief Financial Officer of Trent Ltd., discusses the strategic levers powering this momentum, the company’s selective approach to franchising and the capabilities being built for the next decade of growth.

Trent Ltd. has seen remarkable growth over the past few years, particularly through Westside and Zudio. What have been the key drivers behind this expansion momentum?

Our business strategy is driven by multiple choices and disciplines across our value stream. It is aimed at building consumer brands that resonate at scale, leverage our platform and deliver resilient financial outcomes. The Trent Playbook has evolved substantially over the years.

Our business model has increasingly evolved to deliver desirable customer propositions. The emphasis on own brands, credible quality, and nimble responsiveness to emerging consumer preferences coupled with relative price stability contributes to our distinctive position in the lifestyle space.

• We are culturally wired to encourage creativity and deliver compelling offerings. This includes ownership of product design and curation, speed from concept to market and consistency of offer across channels.
  
• In many ways, Trent is quintessentially direct-to-consumer as we adopt direct distribution and avoid third-party channels. We maintain an integrated approach to our stores and digital channels. Consequently, we command best-in-class full-price revenues, consistency of proposition and industry-leading online return rates. This playbook allows complete ownership of multiple parts of our value chain from sourcing and production to retailing. While this has led to a calibrated scale-up historically, our brands have now achieved critical mass, creating a strong growth flywheel.
  

How do you evaluate potential new markets or cities for Zudio and Westside’s entry? What metrics or indicators guide these decisions?

We are expanding across diverse markets in India, including many Tier 2 and Tier 3 locations. The strong traction gives us the conviction to deepen our presence in hinterland markets. At the same time, we continue to strengthen our footprint in metro and Tier 1 cities. The focus is on scaling reach and revenue share in key proximate markets.

The affordable fashion space is becoming increasingly crowded. How does Trent maintain its differentiation strategy in such a competitive environment?

Fast fashion is gaining traction across several brands, demanding rapid design-to-shelf capabilities. As competition intensifies, speed, trend responsiveness and pricing are continuously being elevated.

We encourage a culture of creativity to deliver products that connect with customers. Our operating principles ensure discipline across the product value chain from design to curation enabling efficient execution and consistency across channels.

Our in-house creative teams design and develop the entire portfolio fashion, lifestyle and home. They undertake research and analyse trends to offer fresh, relevant, and exciting products. Our captive design studios translate global high-fashion influences into products aligned to India’s market needs.

By leveraging AI and data analytics, including Generative AI (GenAI), we gain insights on colours, silhouettes and patterns while incorporating weekly trading and fabric analytics. This leads to innovative, market-driven offerings.

Trent recently began exploring franchising for Zudio and potentially other formats. What prompted this strategic shift?

We prefer to retain operating control of our stores and ownership of merchandise. Our approach to franchising remains selective, primarily driven by property-related objectives. Our dominant model continues to be Company-Owned and Company-Operated (COCO).

From a CFO’s perspective, how does franchising change the company’s capital allocation and risk-return profile?

The franchising model allows a balanced risk-reward sharing between stakeholders. However, the approach must align with strategic priorities, the operating model and above all customer experience. In our business, we retain operating control of stores and merchandise ownership at all times.

What is Trent’s broader vision for 2030? Where do you see Trent in terms of scale, footprint and market share by then?

Trent has evolved into a platform capable of originating, incubating, and scaling a portfolio of growth engines. We take a differentiated approach to brand experience while deeply integrating systems, processes and infrastructure to address diverse market opportunities.

We continue to expand across more markets, especially Tier 2 and Tier 3 locations supported by strong traction. Meanwhile we are strengthening our metro and Tier 1 presence by increasing store density and elevating store look & feel.

Over time, our ambition is to build a compelling, future fit portfolio of lifestyle brands each with a distinctive consumer identity and a substantial market opportunity. We are strengthening our core for efficiency, enhancing our propositions in key categories and driving premiumisation through desirable products, convenience, and elevated experiences.

How is Trent integrating digital transformation and omnichannel retail into its long-term growth plan?

We continue to enhance digital and technological capabilities across the business. An omnichannel-focused approach for Westside integrates our online and offline stores.

We are adopting contemporary platforms and tools to elevate customer experience, process effectiveness, and operational productivity. We have also established a Digital, Data & Analytics Centre of Excellence, focused on actionable insights to support decision-making. Predictive analytics enables our design and buying teams to respond faster to evolving customer needs.

GenAI use cases have shown encouraging results across several processes. We are also attracting tech and data talent while upskilling existing teams to enhance responsiveness to market trends.

With rapid store openings, how is Trent building leadership and operational capabilities to sustain growth?

We continuously adopt market-leading technology and innovative solutions across our value chain to meet evolving needs. We are building a future-ready portfolio of lifestyle brands while enhancing efficiency using RFID technology improving inventory tracking, reducing manual tagging and boosting store operations.

Our investments in backend infrastructure and logistics ensure agility, resilience, faster deliveries, wider availability and a seamless experience. Warehouse automation including spiral conveyors, boom conveyors and cross-belt sorters has boosted throughput and space utilization while reducing manual intervention.

We have also implemented TMS for greater visibility and control over logistics enabling route optimisation, real-time tracking, load consolidation and transport partner performance monitoring.

What are some of the biggest lessons learned from Trent’s growth journey so far?

Our leadership emphasizes discipline, agility and continuous learning as cultural pillars enabling growth and innovation. The operating model centralises planning and merchandising to maintain consistency and reduce errors.

Ongoing investments in technology and process simplification help build ‘Muscle Memory’ to manage scale and change simultaneously supporting sustainable growth aligned with core values.

As CFO, what’s your personal vision for Trent’s next phase of growth and what excites you most about the road ahead?

In recent years, Trent has emerged stronger with a differentiated strategic position. Sustained focus on brands, customer experience and store expansion has maintained strong momentum. Our strategic priorities centre on accelerating differentiation refining our model to deliver the ideal mix of quality, price and elevated experiences.

We continue to focus on own brands, responsiveness to consumer shifts and direct customer engagement. With an integrated supply chain tech stack and support platform, Trent’s operating leverage will continue to drive performance.

The expansion of our geographic reach, full omnichannel integration, and digitisation across the business will remain key to our growth journey.