Green Giraffes: Offering consultancy services to e-commerce companies to scale their revenue

Green Giraffes is a Delhi based consulting firm which offer their services to lifestyle e-commerce brands to scale their turnover.  Sarika and Pratik are the founders of Green Giraffes.

After NIFT, I started my retail journey with Pantaloon (now future group) and Benetton. After working for some time in Philips after ISB, I started my first entrepreneurial venture, MadCow, which was a design firm. I made a conscious switch to online industry post MadCow. It has now been a decade of working with various in fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. Working with young teams and a super dynamic environment keeps us on our toes, Sarika.

We got an opportunity to talk with Sarika the co-founder of Green Giraffes. Read her story to know more about her journey as an entrepreneur.

Give a brief info about your startup?

Green Giraffes specialises in scaling up fashion and lifestyle e-commerce businesses. We are digital experts and work with our clients to address specific challenges /overall revenue growth and brand building for the digital business . We believe in working with an inside – out approach with our clients. 

What made you start your startup and what problem does it solve?

We posses an in-depth understanding of fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. This unique combination of skills in digital marketing and retail has made us extremely useful to businesses in the fashion and lifestyle space. 

Digital startups in fashion and lifestyle, often suffer from the lack of understanding of the domain. They need somebody in the leadership to bridge the gap between digital and the domain.

In traditional businesses, the biggest challenge is their struggle in understanding how digital media is transforming their business. Due to being caught up with day to day operations, the leadership is not able to track the fast changing world of digital media. We start at the strategic level by developing a view on the long term impact of digital media on the business. It is, thereafter, translated into long term and short term plans.  

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

I was working with 99labels as Head of Marketing before starting Green Giraffes. I have worked in the fashion and lifestyle domain for over 15 years. 

I was never someone who could work as an employee in large organisations. I tried a couple of times and realised I am best on my own as an entrepreneur. 

After NIFT, I started my retail journey with Pantaloon (now future group) and Benetton. After working for some time in Philips after ISB, I started my first entrepreneurial venture, MadCow, which was a design firm. I made a conscious switch to online industry post MadCow. It has now been a decade of working with various in fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. Working with young teams and a super dynamic environment keeps us on our toes .:)

Where is your startup based out of? Why do you think that is the best place for you?

We started out of Delhi, but we work with clients across India. Most of the businesses are based out of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. We go wherever the clients are. 

As a startup founder, what are you paranoid about? What keeps you awake at night?

Oh my god! I don’t even know where to begin from. A good delivery of a project, to maintain a steady pipeline of clients, finding the right talent , paying my taxes on time (I am terrible on these :)), to keep yourself updated in fast changing digital environment, when you send out a proposal and wait for the client to come back and there is silence !!!!!! That one kills quite a bit.  I am sure everyone knows a bit of that. 

Who are your competitions and how are you better than them?

There are quite a few experts like us who are solving this problem for businesses. However, due the unique combination of skills that we offer, there are not many direct competitors. The large format consulting companies have digital transformation practices, which are normally offered to bigger organisations. We work with mid-sized businesses. 

How hard is it to have a work-life balance as a startup founder and how do you manage it?

There is nothing like work -life balance. It is sometimes lot of work and then there are slumps periods and you adjust your life accordingly. I would recommend to focus on staying healthy and taking some time out in the day for self irrespective. It would help you perform better and stay strong when the going gets tough. 

Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

We are are services based business and don’t need investments. So, no funding required in any manner as of now. 

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you? Why do they have that? What’s the reality?

We often get confused for a digital agency. It takes sometime to explain that we are an extension of your digital team and work with agencies /internal teams to deliver on a project. We also train and transfer knowledge to the team.

What gets you excited about this company?

Every time we have a new client, it gives us a huge opportunity to learn also. To justify our high fees, we need to be at the wavefront of digital marketing. This motivates us to go out with all guns blazing with every new assignment. We thrive on the energy of working on a new project. 

Tell us how a day in your life looks like? Your schedule for a day right from the time you get up till you hit the bed at night.

My day typically starts at 7:30-8:00 am and I hit work by 10 am. Sometimes, I log in before that itself if there is a fire and work through breakfast. I try hit a yoga class around 8 am around lean time. Monday are quite crazy as is the case with most people. One of my team members has a 8 months old baby and works virtually with us. Sometimes, we work around her schedule in the morning esp for calls etc. We typically go on to work till 6-7 depending on the requirement for the day. Sometimes, if we are in clients office then it could also go on longer depending on where we are on the project schedule. Evening has not particular pattern. If I manage to come back on time and am not feeling too exhausted , I like to head for my yoga class or meet a friend/parents. I sometimes like to vegetate in front of the Netflix’s also. I get to sleep around 11:30 -12:00am . Typically, like to read something before I hit the bed. 

Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other?

Most of us have worked together on some assignment in the past. So we are familiar with the working style of one another before  starting out. It helped as we don’t need to do checks and balances. We like to keep it lean and build a super skilled /experienced team. We are now planning to expand further and might need to get out there a little more aggressively in terms of hiring. 

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