Exclusive | For all contemporary women: Ladyblush's Suneet Manchanda

The number of buyers buying online has increased from a few thousands to millions over the last decade. E-commerce companies have been spending a huge amount in building new categories, new users, and new formats. One such category which is now receiving attention is women and fashion. Agrees Suneet Manchanda, Co-founder & COO, Lady blush Ecommerce, while speaking about the prospects of this segment to Adgully. He says, “Women and fashion is the fastest growing user segment in the ecomm space and the fashion & lifestyle categories are most under-represented. That is one of the reasons founders Ladyblush decided to focus on this category and create a meaningful business. “We believe that this is more scalable and considering our TG (Indian women consumer), where the demand expectations are so varied,” he adds.

 

Ladyblush’s focus is on cosmetics, lingerie and sarees besides new adjacent categories which have been recently added like home décor & kitchenware. The portal has witnessed a consistent growth of 25-30% month-on-month since going live in February 2012, driven mainly through organics or alliances. It has over 15K listings across 8 categories with a supplier base of over 150 from 23 cities across India. Ladyblush hopes to maintain the same growth momentum by periodically adding new product lines, more aggressive paid marketing on search and social media and strategic alliances. It is targeting is to achieve Rs 1crore sales a month by the end of this financial year.

 

With huge marketing spends comes the critical mass of users. The number of internet users has witnessed a great jump over the last 3-4 years. Facebook is one of the single biggest reasons why people in India are beginning to adopt internet.  Beyond Facebook they are looking for buying experience on the internet and this is fuelling growth.

 

Says Manchanda, “we are focussing on building Ladyblush as the shopping destination for women. We believe that category and assortment would be our biggest differentiator and taking that philosophy forward in terms of attracting suppliers and SMEs from regional market which gives us depth and uniqueness in our catalogue.” The company sources sarees, lehengas from Surat, brassware, handcrafted jewellery from Moradabad and designer suits, sarees from Chandni Chowk. In the process it is also looking at being a platform of discovery for the small time sellers spread across India having rich and unique products offerings.

 

Ladyblush hitherto is a self funded venture as the needs of capital are limited. The company maintains a small inventory and prefers to work on orders as an when they come. “A small team is all we need to work in collaboration with the sellers. Our marketplace model works on negative working capital and funds get deployed more efficiently into building technology, processes and people instead of getting blocked in inventories.” Says Manchanda. However it does not mean that the company is not looking out for venture funding. The requirement however is not high because of its business model.

 

Another reasons feels Manchanda is that today Ladyblush has a fundamentally strong business which thrives in a conducive & integrated ecosystem and provides sufficient margins to create a profitable venture. This therefore is the right time for it to hit the market to raise funds as the experimentation stage is over and they have proven business model which now needs to be scaled.

 

Commenting on the huge unjustified valuations to the tune of Rs 1000 crores that a few eComm ventures have seen in the past, only to go bust later, Manchanda says, “if these businesses are built on unit level economics, it is justified, if not, they are not sustainable. You can buy a user for Rs 1000 bucks and make them shop but how will you build loyalty so you don’t have to buy this user again for the next transaction is the key.”