Abof.com To Close Down by The End Of This year

Aditya Birla Group’s flagship ecommerce site Abof.com will close down its operations by the year end, unable to compete against the heavy discounting model of online rivals such as Flipkart and Amazon.

On Thursday morning, Aditya Birla Online Fashion held a 20 minute town hall meeting and informed its employees that December 31 would be the last day of its operations.

Santrupt Misra, HR director at Aditya Birla Group, confirmed the group’s exit from online retail space. “Looking at how the big and long term ecommerce businesses continue to struggle and are unlikely to make money for some time, it did not seem logical to continue as if everything is all right in the sector.

This is the second ecommerce venture closure for Aditya Birla that wound up Trendin.com last year for the same reasons. Abof launched in October 2015.
Aditya Birla Group launched Abof saying the site would not offer discounts and, instead, sell a more limited and fashionable range of merchandise. In an interview in March, chief executive Prashant Gupta had told ET that their “target consumer is not the guy who is looking for a deal”.