On August 5, Reliance Brands Limited announced an exclusive partnership to bring SKIMS — the shapewear and loungewear label co-founded by Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede — to India, with the first stores opening in Delhi and Mumbai ahead of a wider rollout. It's a genuine coup: SKIMS is one of the most-discussed apparel brands in the world, and Reliance Brands' portfolio of Fenty Beauty, Stella McCartney and Valentino makes it a credible partner for a global label choosing India for the first time.
Here's the part that doesn't make it into most of the coverage: Reliance doesn't need a partner to sell shapewear in India. It already owns two of the category's biggest names.
The portfolio nobody's mentioning
Reliance Retail Ventures bought an 89% stake in Clovia for ₹950 crore in 2022, adding it to a stable that already included Zivame, the innerwear platform it had backed years earlier. Between them, Zivame and Clovia cover budget-friendly shaping shorts and tummy tuckers up through mid-market shapewear, sold through their own apps, quick-commerce and physical stores across the country. SKIMS, arriving through the separate Reliance Brands entity, lands at the premium end — international pricing, mall flagship stores, and a founder with 350 million Instagram followers.
Three brands, three tiers, one shareholder.
| Brand | Reliance entity | Position | Primary channel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clovia | Reliance Retail | Budget / mass | App, quick-commerce |
| Zivame | Reliance Retail | Mid-market | App, own stores |
| SKIMS | Reliance Brands | Premium / luxury | Flagship stores, Delhi & Mumbai |
This isn't an accident of two different deal teams doing unrelated deals. It's how Reliance has built almost every category it's serious about — Reliance Jio didn't wait for a rival 4G carrier before undercutting on price, and Reliance Retail's grocery arm competes with its own quick-commerce app. Owning the mass-market distribution and the premium import in the same category means Reliance captures a shopper's spend whichever way her budget moves, rather than losing her to Amazon or a standalone import when she's ready to trade up.
Why now, and why shapewear
The timing isn't arbitrary either. India's shapewear market is still small in absolute terms — under $50 million as recently as 2022 — but industry estimates put its growth rate above 16% a year, and the category has visibly shifted from something worn occasionally under a saree to a wardrobe staple marketed on Instagram try-on content and financed with installment payments. That's exactly the growth curve that makes a category worth entering at every price point simultaneously rather than picking one and hoping it scales.
What SKIMS brings that Zivame and Clovia can't manufacture on their own:
- A recognisable global name. No amount of Indian marketing spend replicates the reach of a Kardashian-founded brand with an existing fan base among Indian shoppers who already buy it via resellers and travel-shopping.
- Inclusive sizing as a genuine differentiator. SKIMS built its reputation on extended size ranges across bodysuits, bras and everyday basics — a positioning gap that Indian innerwear brands have talked about but rarely executed at SKIMS' range.
- Category-adjacent halo. SKIMS sells loungewear, sleepwear and relaxed separates alongside shapewear, widening the addressable spend per customer beyond what a pure-play shapewear brand captures.
What Zivame and Clovia keep that SKIMS won't touch soon:
- Price accessibility. SKIMS is a premium import; Zivame and Clovia's mass and mid-market pricing remains the entry point for the much larger population of first-time shapewear buyers.
- Distribution depth. Zivame and Clovia already run on quick-commerce rails reaching tier-2 and tier-3 cities; SKIMS is launching with two stores in two metros.
- Local fit and format R&D. Clovia in particular has built products like saree shapewear skirts tailored to Indian garments — a category SKIMS' global catalogue doesn't currently address.
The risk in the strategy
Running three brands in one category under one ultimate owner isn't free of tension. If SKIMS' India pricing and marketing succeed in making shapewear aspirational, the more likely outcome for Zivame and Clovia is that they become the "starter" brands shoppers graduate out of — good for Reliance's overall category revenue, less good for the two brands' individual growth stories, and a genuine cannibalisation risk if SKIMS' expansion beyond Delhi and Mumbai moves faster than expected. Reliance is betting it can manage that handoff deliberately rather than have it happen to it. Given how carefully the group has sequenced its telecom, grocery and quick-commerce plays against its own portfolio in the past, that bet looks less like an oversight and more like the plan.
Not yet public: SKIMS' India retail pricing, the exact store opening dates in Delhi and Mumbai, and how Reliance plans to differentiate marketing across all three brands. Those details will matter more than the announcement itself once the stores actually open.