New Delhi/Mumbai, Oct. 9 -- There's a lot happening at online fast-fashion retailer Shein. The China-founded, Singapore-headquartered company is readying for multi-billion-dollar public listing in Hong Kong. It is in the middle of an aggressive revenue expansion that has market analysts downgrading shares of rivals such as H&M and Inditex, which owns the Zara brand. But, here in India, more than six months after it relaunched partnering Reliance Retail Ventures, Shein is finding the going slower than from its earlier stint here when it and 58 apps from China were banned by the government in 2020. Homegrown rivals and fashion industry executives tell Mint that in the five years of Shein's absence, India's fast-fashion and 'Gen Z'-focused apparel business has accelerated with local players catching up and altering the competitive landscape. The break from India may have compromised the very core of Shein's success-speed and variety. The idea behind the Shein-Reliance licensing deal was that the Indian oil-to-retail conglomerate would handle all operations and production of the online giant's rapidly-changing design catalogue. In other words, Reliance Retail would tap into India's sprawling micro and small medium enterprise garments supply chain of over 25,000 units, per a report in The Economic Times, and power the partnership with the technology smarts of a global "ultra-fast fashion" leader. Shein's storied catalogue is updated by designs identified using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and the company claims that it rolls out small batches of new designs in as less as three to seven days. In India, the design-to-launch timelines have improved dramatically but it still takes 30 days (earlier, it was 46 days). "Our superior sourcing ecosystem is a strategic advantage.a 30-day mind-to-shelf cycle in fashion, we can move products from concept to consumer faster than our competitors," Isha Ambani, director of Reliance Retail Ventures said at Reliance Industries' annual general meeting (AGM) this August. Shein drops about 320 styles a day or 10,000 a month, according to an industry insider who requested anonymity; Reliance wants to scale this up to 30,000. Shein's website (sheinindia.in) and app draw nearly four million monthly visits and 2 million daily users in India, with Gen Z women making up 65% of the traffic, according to industry insiders. Shein India's online metrics are dwarfed by rivals such as Myntra and Meesho but is just starting out. Shein's second entry in India is going to be tougher than its first India stint. Between 2018 and 2020, before it was banned, Shein had scaled up to over Rs.340 crore in revenues, data from researcher Tracxn showed, but the business vanished with the app ban. (Its global revenues were $9.8 billion then, per Tracxn.) The intervening five years coincided with fast fashion and e-commerce in India exploding. In 2024, for instance, fast-fashion outpaced the broader apparel sector, growing 30-40% annually, according to consulting firm Redseer. Not just that, a mix of homegrown rivals and conglomerate brands took over instead. VC-backed brands such as Newme, Snitch, and Urbanic are capturing Gen-Z attention, along with value-conscious e-commerce rival Meesho that targets customers in smaller towns. Tata Trent's Zudio is a runaway success, crossing $1 billion in annual revenue in FY25, as the company said earlier this year. In fact, Reliance Retail has itself launched brands to address the price-conscious Gen-Z customer base that Shein is popular with. Among its recent launches are Azorte and Yousta. "In fashion and lifestyle, AJIO has grown 7x in the last five years. New formats like Yousta and Azorte are capturing younger audiences," Isha Ambani said at the AGM, crediting the Shein partnership for bringing global fashion to India at affordable prices. Industry executives Mint spoke estimate that Myntra commands roughly a third of India's online fashion market, while Flipkart Fashion and Amazon together make up about 40-50%. Reliance's Ajio has climbed into the low teens, with the rest scattered among smaller D2C players....