Co-Founder of $1Billion Startup Radhika Aggarwal’s Success Story

Radhika Aggarwal is a popular entrepreneur well-known for being the co-founder of the online marketplace ShopClues. She is the first Indian woman to enter the Unicorn club. Her success story has been quite an inspiration for startup entrepreneurs.

She has always been open to challenges and her entrepreneurial journey was no different. With her MBA degree from Washington University and vast work experience with big companies like Goldman Sachs and Nordstrom, she is the recipe for both financial and professional success.

Radhika started ShopClues in 2011 with just 10 members in her team including her husband, Sandeep Aggarwal. The venture was not an easy one to see through. But Radhika found herself celebrating the little victories that eventually led up to praiseworthy ones.

According to a report, in 2017, Shopclues’ revenue stood at Rs. 79 crores from Rs. 31 crores in 2014.

In January 2018, she and her husband raised $100 million in funding in a Series E round which was led by a Singapore-based fund.

Radhika Aggarwal Early Career Life

Radhika Aggarwal hails from an army family because of which, she studied across 10 different schools during her schooling years. While this definitely was a tedious task to make herself comfortable, although it helped her shape people skills very well.

In 1999, she moved to the United States of America to pursue her MBA and joined Goldman Sachs in 2001. Within a year, she moved to Nordstrom, an American chain department store headquartered in Seattle. This served as a learning ground for Radhika as she found herself in strategic planning. She gives the credit to the company for her skills with customer service.

She worked with the company until 2006 and went on to start her own company called Fashion Clues. The company was solely run and handled by her and dealt with fashion and lifestyle.

Radhika Aggarwal Success Story

Radhika shares a close bond with her company and considers the startup as her third child. She loves her entrepreneurial journey, which brought in multiple milestones like getting 3.5 lakh merchants at the end of 2015 to raising two funding rounds and joining the Unicorn Club in 2016,

Her grit and determination along with skills landed her several awards. She won the Outlook Business Woman of Worth Award at the Outlook Business Awards in 2016. In the same year, she also won the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year at Entrepreneur India Awards, along with the Exemplary Woman Entrepreneur of the Year at CMO Asia Awards.

Another major challenge in her success story has been the stereotypical views held against women entrepreneurs by and large. Maintaining a work-life balance was another challenge for her. However, she gives the credit to her supportive family.

She once shared that - though investors are usually apprehensive about Investing in women’s start-ups her case has been different. She has found supportive investors and she gives the credit to her strategic team.

She also takes pride in having many female customers and merchants associated with ShopClues. In 2016, around 23-25% of customers were women while 25% were also merchants. This means that 80,000 or ShopClues total 3,50,000 were women.

Women and Business

Radhika Aggarwal says that it is important to have female representation in the Industry. With smartphones and the internet, there is definitely a hike in the number of female entrepreneurs in India. She also pointed out that women have stronger loyalty and more individual purchases in a year.

Conclusion

Radhika Aggarwal’s life has been one roller-coaster ride right from moving across various places to ending up where she should be. Her determination to succeed combined with work-life balance is an inspiration to women who consider business as a hurdle to family life. One can separate professional and family life with the right planning and strategically devising workable plans for both the family and business.