Richa Kar and Kapil Karekar changed the landscape of the untapped lingerie market with Zivame. It began in 2011 as an online aggregator of well-known lingerie brands like Enamor, Amante, and Jockey, and became a private label business by 2016. Zivame was acquired by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail in 2020 for $160 million.
Zivame (Actoserba Active Wholesale Pvt. Ltd) paved a new path as it provided women with a hassle-free online shopping experience. After Richa Kar left the company in 2017 and after a lot of leadership changes in the company, Zivame is now finally on the path of profits under the guidance of Lavanya Pachisia, Zivame’s chief operating officer.
Under Lavanya Pachisia's leadership, Zivame, through all its sales channels, was profitable in FY23. This was confirmed by Lavanya Pachisia in a conversation with Inc42.
Lavanya Pachisia is a Chartered Accountant and Cost Accountant and has over 2 decades of work experience in different areas of business strategy, financial management, and business planning.
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Lavanya Pachisia has been working as a Chief Operating Officer at Zivame for 6 years. Before this, she worked as a Finance Controller at Nike and as an Audit executive at Ernst & Young Global Limited (EY).
Speaking about Zivame's success, Lavanya Pachisia said, "Historically, Zivame operated as a digital-first brand, primarily functioning from Zivame’s own website and selling through marketplaces, thus upholding its retail presence. But there has been a significant development in the past two to three years [post its acquisition]. Zivame has set up more than 170 proprietary retail stores, from its earlier count of fewer than 50. This marks a substantial expansion in our retail footprint."
How Lingerie Brand Zivame is cracking the Omnichannel Code after the Reliance acquisition under Lavanya Pachisia's leadership
Creating the right lingerie line
Lavanya Pachisia says that women struggle to pick lingerie due to unsuitable fabrics, size misfits, and zero privacy but Zivame keeps up the innovative technology to provide comfortable intimate wear for women of all sizes, shapes, and ages.
"More than 70% of women do not wear the right size,” emphasised Pachisia. "Zivame is one of the pioneers in addressing this issue and offers an extensive range. It can be as small as 28 and as large as 50. You even also get something as rare as 34.5. This is a capability traditional players often lack."
Keeping a close look at operations for maximum growth
Zivame adopted a two-pronged strategy where it shifted most of its manufacturing operations to domestic facilities. Lavanya Pachisia says that with the Make in India initiative, they have moved it to manufacturing in India with more vendors.
In-store buying made not only possible but also comfortable
Zivame has the same prices for both online and offline customers. The company sticks to the concept of ‘true’ pricing over discounts, said Lavanya Pachisia. It does not matter if the shopping is done online or offline, in a Tier I or a Tier II location, prices and discounts remain the same across all channels.
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