Zivame appoints Shaleen Sinha as COO

Online lingerie retailer Zivame has appointed Shaleen Sinha as its chief operating officer to drive e-commerce, nearly two months after it secured $40 million in funding.

“We seek to create one of the most consumer-centric companies by building a stronger technology and data-oriented company and by building an employee-centric organization,” Sinha told ET. Sinha was vice president, the chairman’s office at Aditya Birla Group, overseeing Idea, Madura, Pantaloons, More, among other units.

Sinha said Zivame would build itself organically by partnering with specialists in the domains or exploring inorganic options. The company is also reformulating HR policies and working on metrics around people satisfaction, engagements, he said.

He added with scores of women across Tier II and III pockets of India still trapped in the old formats and habits of purchasing innerwear, women’s lingerie would be an exciting and promising niche to look forward to in the Indian e-commerce space.

While the closet of an urban Indian woman is expanding — one in every six has more than 15 bras in her wardrobe — there are gaps in the market, pointsout Richa Kar, founder and chief executive officer, Zivame who raised Series C round of $40 million from Zodius Technology Fund and Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of government of Malaysia. “Our focus is on developing products and categories specifically for the Indian body-type and price sensitivity,” he told ET.

Taking its ‘Fit is My Right’ campaign — that enables women to educate customers about the right fits of lingerie — beyond colleges, Kar said Zivame would launch fit stores across the country. The basic bras-to-shapewear e-tailer claims to be selling at the rate of more than one bra per minute.