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Pearl Uppal, who quit Yahoo! India as director, sales in October, has partnered with Harish Bahl, founder and chief executive officer, Smile Interactive Technologies Group to launch an online retail venture called Fashionandyou.com.
Uppal will be the co-founder and chief executive officer, while Bahl will hold the position of investor, founder and chairperson of Fashionandyou.com. He will act as a mentor and also be involved in the daily operations of the website.
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The portal will go live on November 16. Uppal explains that the business model of Fashionandyou.com will be based on the concept of sample sales, in which a shopping portal organises online sales to sell luxury brands and high-end fashion products at discounted rates of up to 70 per cent.
Usually, an online sample sale event lasts for a limited period (24-72 hours) and a fixed quantity is offered on sale.
Products such as apparel, watches, footwear, handbags, sunglasses and home décor will be made available on sale on Fashionandyou.com.
The venture will be targeted towards the upper middle class segment and high net worth individuals.
Only those users who are members of the website can purchase the products. The membership to the portal will be free but based on invitations only.
Uppal says that Fashionandyou.com is actually a part of a global brand alliance consisting of seven other sample sale websites across Russia (Kupivip.ru), Canada (Beyondtherack.com), Switzerland (Fashionfriends.ch), Brazil (Brandsclub.com.br), Germany, Turkey and Australia. All portals will share market strategies and may come together to buy products from manufacturers.
Apart from receiving investment from Harish Bahl, Fashionandyou.com has also received funding from a few European investors. Although Uppal is not ready to reveal the names of the European investors, she indicates that the investors are the same for other portals in the alliance.
Initially, the retail venture will be promoted through social media and word of mouth marketing.
Interestingly, Bahl has not exited from Smile Interactive.
Smile Interactive owns a stake in interactive agency Quasar and has incubated ventures such as Tyroo.com, an online ad network; Zoomtra.com, a travel meta search engine and Zumtra, an online travel technology provider.
© 2010 afaqs!From Onkar Singh, Fri 13 Nov 2009 11:45:15 AM Pearl has mostly looked after the ad sales function n her career. It will be interesting to see, how she will chalk out her career beyond sales.
From Pradeep D, Wed 11 Nov 2009 11:54:37 AM For Satya, now you know the diffrence capital makes. India is capital starved, which means great ideas from technology guys, unless backed with an equally great business plan, will never pass muster. We are a bania controlled and influenced economy, which means we do very well on ROI parameters, but very poorly on big innovations. Look at the biggest examples of tech briliance like google, facebook, twitter, skype, and you will see the ideas came from tech guys who had little idea on how they would monetise them. Out here, we are probably stuck in the loop of copying these ideas and try to monetise them better then the original creators. Doesn't always work, as you can see from the performance of big Indian attempts in the social networking space, or the lack of good independent editorial products in the financial space.
From NDMishra, Wed 11 Nov 2009 09:27:12 AM Sales people dominating digital media is a fact for now,but,the scene and arena is not expanding steadily.Requirement is expansion of service input/workforce.One option is creating a promoter chain as 'Amway' or 'DXN- medicare.ND Mishra.
From Satya, Tue 10 Nov 2009 05:06:45 PM The Indian digital media scene is dominated by sales people.
Specially Smile- as a company- is full of former sales people at the helm of affairs- in their various companies.
Just an observation- maybe nothing bad about it- but a point to be noted.
We need entrepreneurship in India- and at the same time- we need a well balanced eco system from people of various disciplines making it big. There are hardly any technology/media people starting up something.
