Saga of Lovely Group scion who brought e-revolution in Family business

Often scions of big enterprise or group opt to take ahead the legacy of their parent’s venture, even after taking higher education from top ranking international colleges. However, very few have courage to carve their own path and create history.

After completing MBA from Boston, Vaibhav Mittal returned to India in 2014, with handful experience in eRetail at a Musical Instrument company in Los Angeles (LA). His first choice here was to turn his passion for music into profession.

Seeing the intense competition and limited resources to flourish in Indian music industry, Mittal decide to switch to his second love for Organic Products, which was developed in Los Angeles.

Typically, it is critical for an entrepreneur to understand when to stay in the course and when to change direction. Thus, with an aim to develop a much organised market for organic products like globally dominating LA, the 31-year-old entrepreneur started LovelyLifestyle.com.

“When I was in the USA, I was part of the world’s most mature market for ecommerce business and was directly competing with Amazon on a daily basis, to get the top ranking in the market. Interestingly, I had no idea that ecommerce in India had grown exponentially after I left in 2010. And, that’s when I decided to bring together my professional experience of ecommerce with love for Organic and Natural products,” explained Mittal.

Market scenario

Highly influenced by the global demand of organic personal care products, which was over $7.6 billion (approx Rs 50,000 crore) in 2012 and is expected to reach $13.2 billion (approx Rs 80,000 crore) by 2018, growing at a CAGR of 9.6 per cent from 2012 to 2018, Mittal decided to create a much organised space in Indian market with his venture Lovely Lifestyle

Started with a seed capital of Rs5 crore, Mittal’s clear vision has brought healthy returns to his 1 and half year old venture.

“Based on current growth rate, we have grown about 200 per cent since our inception. Our growth rate is 20 per cent on month-on-month basis and we expect to take at least 5 per cent of the total market share for Beauty & Wellness Industry in the years to come. Our Average Order Value (AOV) has risen from mere Rs500 in the first month to Rs2,000. Our customer satisfaction rate is about 98 per cent. Our shipping time for most of orders has reduced to 2-3 days from 6-7 days,” unveiled Mittal.

Reportedly, the Organic skincare market in India is estimated to grow two folds in the next five years and cross the mark of Rs 1,000 crore by year 2020. The online sales of FMCG categories like male grooming, beauty, personal care and infant care will constitute $5 billion in Indian market (Rs 30,000 crore) by 2020.

Why change in business model

Scion of Jalandhar-based conglomerate Lovely Group, which has diversified business pursuits like Lovely Professional University (LPU), Lovely Sweets, Lovely Autos and Lovely Bake Studio, Mittal, had room space to implement his ecommerce experience in diverse sectors. Still, he pivoted online retail of organic products.

With the presence of multiple products and brands in the market, consumers were facing difficulty in selecting the right product, even after delving into the background and USP of the product. Realising the dearth of an organised space to buy and sell organic products encouraged Mittal to pivot his ancestral business model and turn to create Lovely Lifestyle.

“A complete brand profiling and description was done to provide convenience to the customers and to help them understand diverse brand and products offerings. Besides these, we used to get a lot of calls from customers seeking our advice to take the best product from our large collection. So, we started creating special product collections based on top selling products and our in-house researched recommendations,” noted Mittal.

Way forward

Poised to become the foremost choice of global players to foray into Indian market, Lovely Lifestyle has bagged about 10,000 products from over 150 organic product brands in India.

Further, talking about scaling of his venture and future plans with it, Mittal noted, “We are investing heavily on the development of our website and UI/ UX. We are partnering with complementary service providers like 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. In addition, we are developing an Affiliate Marketing models to tie-up with top salons, gyms and spas, where our TG lies.”

Lovely Lifestyle is also investing in few ATL and BTL marketing activities to follow its target consumers and in coming months, has plans to try Influencer Marketing to catch attention of social media players.

The online retail brand has plans to be an active part of the fastest growing ecommerce market of India which has potential to be worth $100 billion by 2020.