Ecommerce success and community building, CEO of Limeroad shares tips

In a recent chat with YourStory, the CEO and Founder of LimeRoad, Suchi Mukherjee shared interesting insights and tips for ecommerce growth and brand building. Apart from talking about building a marketplace for the Indian consumer, she also talked about building and maintaining an appealing community and the practical approach to sustaining a business.

Below are some excerpts from the discussion.

On starting up a consumer business in India

“This is a phenomenal time for anyone who is passionate about consumer internet in India. LimeRoad today has an amazing product, thousands of vendors, engaged participation from the community and everything scrollable on a mobile interface. This is a great time, and we are building something that we believe is truly special and lasting.”

On hiring and retaining great talent

“When I came back to India, I set up a tech team in Bangalore. I used to spend time in Bangalore and Delhi. Then I moved our entire tech from Bangalore to Delhi and everyone moved. That shows the kind of commitment our team has to LimeRoad. I unhesitatingly call my team at 4am in the morning. We internally have a great rights plus great duties philosophy — and when you hire the best people, this mantra works very well.”

The impact LimeRoad is creating in India

“We’ve been able to grow this community because we are humble. Every time we make a mistake, we send a long passionate email to our users. My partners and I think that we are the back office at LimeRoad, our community is the front end and our team is the middle ground that merges both parties.”

On focus required for building a great product

“I think about revenue only two days a month, and maybe I spend an hour on revenues everyday. The rest of the time we are focussed on building an amazing product. I have seen this happen in the past at eBay, Gumtree and Skype, and my partner Prashant has seen that at Facebook, as well. Money will flow if you have a good product, and if have a bad product -no matter what you do- money will not come. That is our core mantra. We’re thinking about core platform problems. In India, 50-70% of people who download an app in the first month churn. Our churn rate is only 40%. Most interestingly, of all the people who survived the first month, 75% of users come back in the second month and they use the app at least 10 times in a month. Our focus is just to keep investing in the core platform and keep our consumers happy, and we believe returns will come.”

On ultimate goal for LimeRoad

Some of our vendors who’ve been with us have now become vendor millionaires. My biggest challenge is to enable every possible vendor in India to be a millionaire. I am very proud of our community and our scrapbookers. My only goal is to reach out to every single woman in this country and convert her into a LimeRoad user, and turn our vendors into millionaires.

Source: YourStory