Britain’s biggest clothing retailer Marks & Spencer wants to convince India’s young and trendy that it is fashionable too as it looks to offset slowing profit growth and declining sales overall.

To succeed, it has to take on the world’s biggest fashion retailer Inditex SA and its Zara brand, which has managed to outperform Marks & Spencer in India even though it set up shop in one of the world’s biggest retail markets almost a decade later. “Since they entered, Marks & Spencer has had one issue and that is getting their positioning right,” said Harminder Sahani, managing director of retail consultancy Wazir Advisors.

“Since they entered, Marks & Spencer has had one issue and that is getting their positioning right,” said Harminder Sahani, managing director of retail consultancy Wazir Advisors.

They are now trying to become hot and happening and that is a very competitive segment,” he said.

On Monday it said it expects to have 80 stores in India by 2016, making the country the largest international market by stores outside of the UK.

Marc Bolland, chief executive of London-based Marks and Spencer Group Plc, said India is the retailer’s new “priority market”. “We also want to expand to attractive tier-II cities like Surat and Kanpur, and aim for more than 80 stores by 2016,” he told Mint in an interview.

“China used to be the priority international market, but now that has changed,” he further added. Analysts said this would be a big step for company, which, according to retail experts, did not capitalise on its advantage of being the first foreign apparel brand to enter country and had only 14 stores during 2001-08, notes DNA.

Marks & Spencer wants to grow franchise in India, a market that sees $38 billion of apparel sales a year and where the biggest spenders are, on average, aged 35 and below. Chief Executive Marc Bolland is opening the retailer’s biggest India store on Monday in a fashionable shopping area of Mumbai. Regulatory filings, however, show the retailer has failed to turn a profit in India since 2009. Consultants say M&S has struggled since it set up shop in Asia’s third largest economy in 2000, squandering its “first mover” advantage.

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