It is that time of the year when Fashion Week fever grips everyone. This is a time that’s all about new trends, celebrating fresh talent and looking at established ones to guide the way. One of the leading fashion weeks in the country, Zovi is excited for Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW) Summer/Resort 2013 in Mumbai where we have partnered with them to sponsor the ZOVI Gen Next program.

LFW is jointly organized by Lakmé, the No.1 cosmetics and beauty services brand in India and IMG, the global leader in fashion weeks and event production. This is a platform that is committed to showcasing great talent and continuing the infusion of contemporary energy into Fashion Week. Zovi is gearing up to head to Mumbai from March 22 to March 26^th for LFW Summer / Resort 2013 and Zovi Gen Next which will be held at Grand Hyatt Hotel.

This year promises to be bigger and better. Top notch designers and celebrity showstoppers will take the ramps by storm and established name Namrata Joshipura, will be the Grand Finale designer at LFW Summer / Resort 2013. Another feather in its cap is roping in Naeem Khan, international stalwart designer, who is debuting in India with his exquisite collection this year.

Zovi on the other hand is sponsoring a program which is dedicated to identifying and promoting the best talent in the Indian fashion industry with Zovi Gen Next, where  6 selected designers will take the ramp for the first time to redefine the future of fashion. Their names are: Mumbai-based Karishma Jamwal with her label LOTUS SUTR, Shubham Kumar of SHUBH from Chandigarh, Delhi’s Ragini Ahuja with her brand IKAI, Debashri Samanta, Stephany Dsouza and Sneha of SIYAHI from Kolkatta. These young talents are currently mentored by Aki Narula to showcase their designs on the first day of LFW. In addition, they have also designed one ensemble each for the ZOVI Gen Next Line which will also be showcased on the ramp at LFW.

We sure are excited and counting down to this fashion extravaganza. What about you?

To know more about ZOVI Gen Next,visit: http://zovi.com/gennext

Where’s the mobile app? Most techies in companies which host a web product would identify with that question (wink, wink:-)). But then, like all stubborn hard-nosed techies, we didn’t (and will never) want to build something and throw it out there just for the sake of it. As artists, we wanted to build something we would feel proud to put our name on. And so here we are! We’ve just released our first android app and we hope the community likes it as much as we do!

Here are some behind-the-scene facts for those who are interested (tech and otherwise)..:-

• In everything we do, we try to opimize for only one thing – customer experience
• We strongly beleive in iterative development and in the concept of minimum viable product. So what we have out there is usable and works, but don’t expect to move a cannonball with it… (you can, after we’ve had a go at the next few iterations
• In general, we also beleive in data more than we do on opinions. So what we have on offer in the app in terms of options, navigation, features and the like is based on what we’ve learnt from user behaviour on our site. Before you jump at this – of course, we will continue measuring and change what is necessary because at the end of the day, we want our customers to use this app for what we meant it for – which is – BUY from our site!
•  We love iconography as much as the next dude, but we won’t bet our salaries on it . So the mixture of icons and text that we’ve used in the application is a starting point for us to measure in the future for efficacy.
•  We use standardized apis across all our applications, be it for the big bad browser on my 15″ mac or the slick windows 8 app we released a few weeks ago or this piece of art we just released today.
• Our UI&X is heavily customized based on multiple factors. We try our best not to compromise there..So you might find something subtly unique on each of the platforms we are on.
•  Credit must go where credit is due. So full credit to @Gulagulaananda (guy in the pic above) for developing this app and the rest of the studs in the @zovi tech team for coming up with the backend services to support the app.
•  We love taking feedback on our work so we can constantly improve. So please feel free to comment on this note with your feedback.
• This is only the beginning. We have a long way to go. We are starting work on the next version tomorrow. For today, we have a few beers with our names on them.

Enough already! Why don’t you’ll download and share your experience now

-Satish Mani