The Ledger
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Taneja: All Purplle blue-collar office staff receive ESOPs
“Who are blue-collared workers you know, they help clean the office, their janitors, and so on and so forth. All of them actually have ESOPs within the firm.”
Taneja: Purplle has never executed layoffs or retrenchments
“We've never let go of people. There have been never any retrenchments at Purple. We never. Even if we close down a business unit we absorb those people in our other businesses. We have never asked anybody to go just because we were shutting some part of the bu…”
Taneja: Platform rivalry matters more to founders than consumers
“I think competition plays more in our heads as founders and management teams than it plays in the heads of a consumer. Consumers, you know, are not as wedded to this category like, you know, probably we are.”
Reddy: Purplle is Blume's only surviving vertical commerce bet
“The other thing I would argue where we failed quite a bit was trying to do vertical product commerce. Got onto the cycle too late. That entire commerce engine works as a herd mentality. Either everybody's making bets or nobody's making bets. And then you would…”
Taneja: Purplle plans to grow 35-40% and IPO in 3-4 years
“So I think, you know, we are looking at growing the firm at closer to 35 to 40% over the next five to 10 years. You know, potentially go public in like three to four years from now.”
Taneja: Purplle should have launched private brands within its first three years
“We ended up building our own brands, but that happened way late in our journey in 2017. I mean, we shouldn't have waited for six years to do it. We should have done this in the first two, three years had we spoken to our consumers.”
Taneja: Purplle acquired Faces Canada at ₹300+ crore revenue with zero layoffs
“Then in December, 2021, early Jan, 20, 22, we acquired Faces Canada. It's a, it's probably India's top four or fair makeup brands. North of 300 crores of revenue, about 11, 1200 people and so that was a big acquisition for us, but and we had to really navigate…”
Taneja: Expecting employees to work like founders is unfair
“I used to feel like everyone should be as quick at doing things as I am. And I think that's an unfair expectation to have. I also used to think that everybody should work as hard as entrepreneurs do. And I think that's also an unfair expectation to have.”
Taneja: Purplle has always operated close to profitability without huge losses
“We've never made huge losses. I mean, I think compared to the capital in the bank, we've always been very close to profitability, if at all.”
Taneja: India presents opportunity to build a $20B-$30B enterprise in 10-15 years
“I think there is definitely an opportunity to build a 20, thirty billion dollar enterprise over the next 1015 years.”
Taneja: IvyCap made 22x on Purplle, returning ₹330 crore
“Luckily IVCAP also exited that round in 2021 for about 330 crores. So they made about 22 X of their investment. IVCAP fund one was about 240 odd crores. So we returned much more than the fund size itself. Although we got only 15 crores from that fund.”
Taneja: Purplle co-founders personally funded negative cash balances daily in 2014
“What happened was we had a term sheet that was withdrawn and, you know, our competitor got funded. And I think those six months are very unforgettable. Rahul and I would typically wake up every morning and see a negative cash balance in the bank account. And, …”
Taneja: Purplle founders did not speak to media for first 7-8 years
“I think first seven, eight years of our life, we never spoke to media.”
Taneja: Beauty unit economics work due to high gross margins and repeats
“It has got exceptionally high gross margins and therefore unit economics is easy to make work in this category. And then, you know, third, it has good repeat business. So, you know, once you acquire a customer, you keep getting the customer for over and over a…”
Taneja: Purplle was down to 50 lakhs in 2017 post-demonetization
“And you know, I think we had a very similar thing in 2017 post demonetization. I think we had about 50 lakhs in the bank account.”
Taneja: Purplle differentiated by targeting Middle India's ₹700-800 spenders
“The way we differentiated in the eyes of consumers was we focused on a dramatically different consumer. We focused on the middle class of India. Somebody who could probably spend seven, 800 rupees every time she shopped for her beauty needs.”
Taneja: Around 150-200 of Purplle's 600 office employees hold ESOPs
“Out of maybe 600 people who work in our offices, about 200, maybe one 50 of them actually have ESOPs, and these are significant value ESOPs.”
Taneja: Launching private brands accelerated customer acquisition at Purplle
“And so we were able to acquire lot more customers when we launched our own brands, then, you know, when, then we were able to acquire, if we didn't have anything exclusive to the platform.”
Taneja: In 2011, payment gateway integration took 30 days and bank-by-bank paperwork
“Getting payment gateway integrated used to be a 30 day process. You know, it was not plug and play that you can do today. You know you had to get documents signed with every bank whose net banking you needed to accept.”