Vaibhav MittalFounder of Lovely Lifestyle Published On: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 Views 2725

We actively seek out the most luxurious, effective, pure, natural, organic beauty & wellness products that the world has to offer. We have handpicked top Organic brands from India and world over. We will be bringing more brands from global portfolio in Organic & Luxury Lifestyle. Indeed, all of our products are either from high quality raw material and/or from all organic and natural ingredients. We insist on including products that have NO SLS/ SLEs, NO Parabens or other harmful chemicals.

We work in a very innovative model, which is though a market place but still has all the efficiency and trust of having products at our own warehouse.  With 10,000 products from more than 150+ brands, we guarantee our products to be 100% Genuine as they are sourced either directly from the brand owners or from the Authorized Dealers in India. In fact, we are so strict on this front, that we offer a Full money back guarantee if our customer ever finds product sold by us to be fake!

We have tied up with India’s leading Logistics/ Shipping companies – FedEx and Delhivery – who combined gives us access to serve 20,000 pincodes in India. We offer Cash on Delivery (COD) on most of our products.

I was in Los Angeles (USA) full time living a dream job in World’s #1 Retail Company for Musical Instruments and working part-time as a musician, when I developed interest for organic health care and beauty products. Using those products I felt the difference immediately, for those products made me feel good and pleasing about myself. The very idea that no matter what, these products are pro to beauty and health and would never bring harm my body and skin made me like and recommend them much more. To be honest enough I developed an intense preference for the organic products, wherever I went my first choice was standardized to be products organic in nature. It was here that I started having business instincts in context to products organic in nature.

I had to return to India in 2014 due to family urgency.

I started researching in the market regarding demand and supply of organic products and to my surprise there were hardly any big sellers of real and genuine organic products in Indian market. It was then I decided to seize the opportunity and started with my own idea for e-business of providing the most real organic & high quality natural products especially in the Tier 2/ 3 cities where demand was significantly high but supply was minimal.

We don’t want to take head-on with big horizontal players and therefore focusing ourselves on niche and strongly growing categories. Presently there are not many players working in Organic Lifestyle and Luxury beauty segment therefore we want to work in this area. I have extensive professional working experience of eCommerce Industry and Luxury Retail in USA. So, I believe that I will be able to utilize my experience and ride the wave of growth in the market.

The concept of natural and organic products was new to Indian market and there were many products which were being sold with the false claim of being organic in nature, therefore I had to go for intense market survey, look for sellers and brand owners of real organic products, set meeting with the sellers and ensure a regular supply of organic products. And above all using those products myself to check their suitability and authenticity of promised results. It was after satisfying these pre-requisites I set out to expand choices on lovely lifestyle. Right selection of the brand so as to ensure that the products are organic in nature and/ or made from purest ingredients was the most critical challenge.

Moreover when I started with this eCommerce venture in India the concept was new to people and thereby I faced hurdles in hiring and selecting the people with extensive knowledge of online marketing platforms. Accordingly I had to set the creativity, online shopping experience, beauty & healthcare knowledge and writing skills as the criteria for selection. Finally we made a team of grads and undergrads who were given professional training and indeed are working as required today.

Another challenge we faced was providing complete information about the products to the buyers for many of them had no knowledge of organic products & their benefits over regular mass-market products. To deal with this challenge, we made our platform content and information driven to help customer make an informed decision about buying product suitable to them.

Since there were many new brands for Organic & Natural products in the market, many people complained that they were not able to choose a particular brand based on its background & USPs. Accordingly, a complete brand profiling and description was done to provide convenience to the customers and to help them understand brand offerings.

Besides these, we used to get a lot of calls from customers asking to recommend best product from our large collection. So, we started creating special product collections based on top selling products and our recommendations. We did one for the winters, which was called Winter Skin Care Regimen (through which we recommended products based on Skin Type). It was very carefully created by our in-house team and industry experts. Similarly, we have created a collection of Organic & Natural products for Hair Care, which is based on Hair Type. Further, for any customer who doesn’t know their Skin Type or Hair Type, we created short quiz to determine it.

The only mantra in which I believe is to work hard and make it happen. To keep consistency in the nature of work done and to ensure hard work doesn’t compromise quality with it.

We started less than a year ago as a venture of Lovely Group (Jalandhar, Punjab) and have kept a seed-fund of Rs. 50 Million for the venture.

Based on current growth, we have grown about 200% since we started. Our growth rate is ~20% MoM and we expect to take at least 5% of the total market share* in coming years. (*As per KPMG Wellness Sector report released in April 2015 –  Beauty & Wellness Industry which is growing at 15-20% annually would nearly double to Rs 80,370 crore by 2017/18.)

The challenge we faced was providing complete information about the products to the buyers for many of them had no knowledge of organic products & their benefits over regular mass-market products. To deal with this challenge, we made our platform content and information driven to help customer make an informed decision about buying product suitable to them.

Since there were many new brands for Organic & Natural products in the market, many people complained that they were not able to choose a particular brand based on its background & USPs. Accordingly, a complete brand profiling and description was done to provide convenience to the customers and to help them understand brand offerings.

Besides these, we used to get a lot of calls from customers asking to recommend best product from our large collection. So, we started creating special product collections based on top selling products and our recommendations. We did one for the Winters which was called Winter Skin Care Regimen (through which we recommended products based on Skin Type). It was very carefully created by our in-house team and industry experts. Similarly, we have created a collection of Organic & Natural products for Hair Care which is based on Hair Type. Further, for any customer who doesn’t know their Skin Type or Hair Type, we created short quiz to determine it.

As per my conviction I believe in:

• Visionary Approach
• Sincerity towards work
• Empathy with customers

As long as you are real to your customers the venture enjoys high reputation in the market.

• Google Analytics
• Evernote
• Google Sheets

Jotting down all that needs to be done and making a tentative plan everyday is the only habit that I think makes me accomplish all my works and achieve my day-to-day targets.

I like to believe in people way often face disappointments when the returns are not as expected. So I am trying not to have high expectations from the beginning until and unless they prove themselves and keep their word.

• One tip to success:

Passion makes the world go round

• One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

Arrogance

• One most important lesson that you have learnt till now: 

Perseverance is the key

We would own 5% of total share in wellness and beauty market in India.

We are partnering with complementary service providers such as beauty services to drive sales and develop institutional partnerships. Our interest is to create a 360-degree level of business partnerships to cater to B2C, B2B and international markets.

We are even planning to expand our technical team for we are trying to bring offline experiences of purchasing beauty products into the online world.