‘Top executives go to shops to observe shoppers’: Mamaearth’s Varun Alagh on creating seamless customer experience

Initial public offering (IPO)-bound Mamaearth’s Co-founder and CEO, Varun Alagh, claims that the entire leadership visits offline stores atleast once a quarter to understand customer behavior. In an interaction with Business Today, Alagh said, “There is no replacement for meeting, talking, and experiencing the consumer’s journey. The leadership goes to the stores (of Mamaearth) every quarter, observing how shoppers shop, how customers react while shopping, etc.”
 
He also told BT that while observing customers is key to understanding customer behaviour offline, for online shopping they rely on data. “Data gives an insight into how a particular format is working.” He said that data points toward trends in consumer behaviour which helps the company in innovating and reinventing itself. 
 
And this is how, he believes, the Gurugram-based company has been able to provide a seamless experience to all its customers across different formats including the offline and the online ones. 
 
The D2C brand started as a digital-first company but gradually expanded to the retail space as well. Today, Mamaearth’s products are present across ecommerce platforms (Amazon, Flipkart, etc), social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram), its stores, and multi-brand outlets.
 
“At the end of the day, you keep seeking feedback and improving,” he noted.
 
The company also revealed in its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) that it wants to set up 132 exclusive brand outlets in the next three years. 
 
Recently, Alagh also revealed how the brand had a ‘board of mothers’ when they started the company. Speaking at an event in New Delhi last week, Alagh said, “Before (the) board of directors, we had (a) board of mothers…We would speak to several mothers to understand their needs for their children.”
 
Alagh said that they wanted to take in feedback and the perspective of mothers to understand the gaps in this market better.
 
Honasa Consumer Private Ltd, which owns Mamaearth and other brands like The Derma Co, BBlunt, Momspresso, etc., filed preliminary papers with the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India in January this year to raise funds through an IPO. The IPO comprises a fresh issue of equity shares worth Rs 400 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) component of 4,68,19,635 equity shares by promoters, investors, and other selling shareholders, according to the DRHP.
 

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