SUCHI MUKHERJEELIMEROAD

CH VIJAYA

EDUCATIONCAREER & EXPERIENCEFAMILY BACKGROUNDLIMEROAD STARTUPPROBLEMS FACED BY SUCHIROLE OF SUCHIPROFILE- QUALITIES & CHARACTERISTICSWOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

OVERVIEW

• A graduate in economics from St Stephen's College, Delhi

• Masters in finance and economics from London School of Economics, UK

• Bachelor in arts specializing in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge

EDUCATION

• Suchi Mukherjee belongs to a middle class family from Haryana

• Suchi Mukherjee family now consists of her husband, two kids and herself. Her parents must have played a huge role in her success, and so must her husband, Suchi Mukherjee family have contributed highly in what she is today.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Lehman Brothers Inc in July 1998, as their new Senior Associate for Corporate Finance( focused on Telecoms Media Technology and Financial Institutions)Virgin Media from June 2003 as a Director of Change and Business Development.(consumer focused & member of Consumer Division Management Team)Suchi worked with them for almost 2 years and then took one of the WISEST DECISIONS of her life; She quit Virgin Media and joined “eBay”!

CAREER

She joined the company first as the Head of Business Seller Programs & CS in the year 2006 and was the member of the UK Operating Management Team as well. With the way she performed, she was quickly promoted within a year, as the Director and Member of Executive Management Team for “Skype”, which back then was a part of eBay Inc.

CAREER

HER RESPONSIBILITIES • included planning,• product / UI design,

• payments of the product

Skype and also looking after its marketing including brand, channels incl. PR and CS. This was altogether a different

learning curve for Suchi. Being a part of the executive management team; here is where she actually learned the

powerful leadership development skills Suchi once again got the opportunity to get promoted as the

new Managing Director for “Gumtree,” which again was a part of eBay Inc.

CAREER

Now Gumtree required a TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP, and in her whole stint with them, she spent most of the time

scaling the team capabilities, product, sales, marketing and CS functions, and at the same time Suchi also re-structured the

financials towards core revenue streams. And with 13-million users, she went on to grow it to UK’s largest horizontal classifieds business in just two years. She lifted the company from a No. 3 position to a market leading

position in jobs and consumer-to-consumer car sales, and also grew the visits by 35% YOY

she decided to move on and do something of her own!

CAREER

So, We can understand that she got very good experience as an employee by

working in different organisations and then she acquired many skills and ready to start

her own start up

RESULT

Interesting facts about Suchi Mukherjee

• She lifted the company Gumtree from No.3 to No.1 in a matter of few years.

• She started her working career at a young age of 22 in Lehman Brothers Inc.

• She was one of the most promoted people in eBay Inc because of her brilliant managerial and business skills.

FACTS

IDEATIONLIMEROAD.COM

Surprisingly, the idea of LimeRoad.com was born out of a moment of utter frustration – she was reading a glossy magazine in London and found a piece of jewelry that she liked, and wanted to buy it, but because it was from some small store in Mumbai, it obviously wouldn’t have reached to her anytime soon.

Identified two things1. no consumer technology2. no platform from which one could access the list’s of

products that were manufactured and shipped out of India, one of the world’s largest manufacturing hubs. Basically, India remained disconnected from the virtual world.

IDEA

• She wanted to build a platform where one could find gorgeous, affordable lifestyle products in an extremely easy to discover interface. She being a woman, knew that women love the different and out-of-the-box stuff, and that product discovery in lifestyle was indeed a very hard problem to solve.

• What made her even more confident was that India back then accounted for more than 21% manufacturing of lifestyle products of world (that’s 21% of a nearly $1 trillion industry). And she wanted to capitalize on this untapped opportunity. Her aim was to simply bring all the vendors who produce high quality affordable products under one roof, via an easy to use interface to enable the discovery.

LIMEROAD

Ankush Mehra, Head of Supply Chain – Reliance Hypermarkets,Prashant Mallik – Ex-Facebook, Microsoft & SiemensAhti Heinla as their Technical Advisor (past: Founding Architect of Skype)Michael V Swaaij as their Advisor (past: ex-Chairman of Skype)

AND WITH THAT THEY HIT IT OFF! LIMEROAD WENT LIVE IN OCTOBER 2012!

MEETING

Finding the right people to build a solid team which was a combination of skill and can-do attitude was one of the biggest challenges for LimeRoadGetting the right kind of infrastructure with high- speed & reliable internet.Complex bank processGetting the company registered with the RoC (Registrar of Companies) processLegal formalities were also something that turned out to be very different from what they had seen.

CHALLENGES

“Life goes on!”

The company has raised a total of whopping $50 Million from Tiger Global, Light speed Venture Partners,

Matrix Partners India and a few others. Their most recent funding includes the series C round of $30 Million, before which they had raised $15 Million and $5 Million, in series B & series A respectively

FUNDING'S

Their revenue model was pretty much simple: they made money when vendors sell i.e. commission revenue (% of sales).

They also went out of their comfort zone to build strong partnerships with a really rich selection of brands and with categories like apparel, accessories, home and food.

They launched with many brands, out of which nearly half were exclusively available with them.. These included national and international mega brands in their flagship form

The platform has grown from — 250,000+ units of unique user generated visual content per month, and 600+ vendors; to posting of 200,000+ unique products and looks per month by the users, and becoming India’s leading discovery platform for lifestyle products with 18 million products.

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

• LimeRoad stands tall with 1.5 million scrapbooks posted by users so far, and 100,000 scrapbooks made per day

• The company now aims to reach out to 400m+ smartphones by around in 2016, out of which 30-50% belonging to women

Voted 1 of 15 ‘Rising Talent – global leaders under 40′ at World Women’s Forum Global Women’s Forum

ACHIEVEMENTS

Manish Saxena: While Suchi is happy with the progress the site has made, there are some key areas of focus for

Limeroad in the coming days. These include their capital light model, vendor relationships, better curation, more

exclusivity and building more traffic. Reply: The capital light model means Limeroad doesn’t have

any inventory and therefore doesn’t require any capital commitment from a brand. Limeroad is also depending on its online customer community to do the curation of products.

“This not only increases customer engagement with the brand, but also is a key aspect of cost control. Besides

generating community-led content which most brands pay for, it also generates community-led ‘freshness’ for the

brand,” explains Suchi.

SUGGESTIONS AND REPLY

SO WHAT IS IT LIKE BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR IN INDIA ?“Entrepreneurship is hard; for men and women alike. In

India three factors heighten the  challenges• The lack of a strong set of mentors / ecosystem to fall back on for guidance, brainstorming and help along the entrepreneurial journey• Relatively low risk appetite among the venture capital community : a preference for higher degrees of certainty; we were very fortunate to have a strong product-centric set of investors• High cash compensation expectations of the relatively hard to find high-quality talent” says Suchi.

ROLE AS AN ENTREPRENEUR

WHAT DOES SUCHI FEEL ABOUT THE CLIMATE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR WOMEN IN INDIA?

“Liberalization of the economy has opened up many more avenues for women, so has

privatization, proving to be hugely beneficial to women entrepreneurs. Today, the policy and 

institutional framework for developing entrepreneurial skills, providing vocation education and training has widened the horizon for economic empowerment of

women.”

WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

A word of advice to other women trying to take the entrepreneurship path or trying to break the glass ceiling.

“To overcome challenges one needs to be highly deliberate. I was in many ways fortunate – though as they say fortune too is

an outcome of perseverance. I worked very hard to ensure

– we surrounded ourselves with a strong set of investors and advisors– we fought hard and scanned the country to find highly motivated talent who would throw themselves at problems– I dug out all the people who had ever worked with my extended network of friends and families to find a set of reliable domestic staff– This one was just a lot of luck — at home a highly supportive partner, parents and in-laws“

ADVICE FOR WOMEN

• Middle class parents• Father and or mother in independent business• College educated• Married• Early 30’s for the first significant venture• Pervious experience in new venture• Desires independence• Motivated by desire for independence and job satisfaction• Small and young business• Self confident• Moderate risk taker• High tolerance for ambiguity (perseverance)• Acquired skills of business• High energy level

HER PROFILE

• Picking up right people• the scrapbook, which enables them unleash

their  creativity. 60% products that you see on the website are exclusively available on LimeRoad.com and the looks curated by our Scrapbookers are 100% unique to LimeRoad.com.

• Tapping the new market tha tis filling the gsp

SUCHI DID RIGHT THINGS LIKE

Suchi- limeroadAnita- bodyshopNidhi - kaaryahAnkitha –saha fundsNeha Motwani- fitternityAnisha Singh-mydala.comAditi- menstrupediaPatricia-sandeephaShazi Visram- happy lifePriyanka Gill- POPxo.com

THANK YOU

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