Prerana, a home maker in Jharkhand was discouraged from exploring the online world by her family members until she started using Limeroad scrapbook, as a platform to show her creative side. “Limeroad scrapbook is my way of getting out there, from the boundaries my family has set for me. They won’t allow me to post pictures on Facebook. But Limeroad has helped me show my creativity to the world,” says Prerana who has created over 2,053 looks on Limeroad.

Prerana is one among the many users on Limeroad scrapbook, a feature introduced by Limeroad which allows its users to create and sell a unique look by selecting from a range of products available on the app. “We currently have 2.5-3 million looks created by users every month. The community posted nearly 2 million style statements as “scrapbooks” last month alone. That’s a 100x growth in less than a year,” says Suchi Mukherjee, founder and CEO of Limeroad.

Limeroad, an online women-centric social commerce platform was launched three years ago when Suchi Mukherjee  found a piece of jewellery on a magazine and was tempted to just touch and buy it on the go. “The impossibility to do so made me realise that there is no consumer technology play in India that has made discovery of lovely products just as easy and entertaining as reading a lovely magazine and there is no place from which one could access the vast array of great products that were being manufactured and shipped out of India, one of the world’s largest manufacturing hubs,” adds Mukherjee.

Lack of an extensive social discovery platform exclusively for Indian women in this country compelled her to create something unique like LimeRoad.com three years ago. Suchi along with Ankush Mehra, co-founder & vice-president, supply chain operations and Prashant Malik, co-founder & CTO joined hands and there has been no looking back since then. “Our brand ‘LimeRoad’ has an interesting story. The goal was to create a digital-age equivalent of the 16th Century Grand Trunk Road—a highway that changed the face of trade in the Indian subcontinent. Taking inspiration from the legendary GT Road is our LimeRoad, with ‘lime’ adding the element of freshness and novelty,” adds Suchi.

This Delhi-based online social commerce platform is backed by investors like Tiger Global, Lightspeed ventures and Matrix partners and has managed to raise $50million so far.

In a year their GMV has increased to 600% with their users have visiting the app more than 84 times in a year on an
average. “As a result 85% of our orders come from organic traffic. Great consumer brands are built from building a tremendously passionate loyal base of customers, who love something fundamental about the product,” says Mukherjee.

Mukherjee mentions that since June, LimeRoad has added 8,000 sellers to its online platform to increase the number to more than 10,000. “This has worked due to improvement of the technology interface for the sellers which now allows them to start their own digital store in 60 seconds from using a smartphone. As many as 76% of the sellers on the site are exclusive to Limeroad,” adds Mukherjee. They also support their sellers with facilities like  photography, cataloguing and other services.

According to Mukherjee, inspite of being highly women-centric she never felt the need of exploring new avenues as nearly 50% of online shoppers in India are women, and shopping is no longer only an activity, but rather a behavioural attribute. “80% of women say they recommend their purchase to other women, thus interaction and experience is what women look for while shopping. Limeroad.com, being a woman’s only discovery platform, is the only player in Indian e-commerce to have grown 700% in the last one year as it caters to this underlining need of interaction,” adds Mukherjee. However she mentions that initially finding great people for the team was hard and complexities with basic infrastructure, including things as basic as reliable Internet, complex bank process, RoC processes was also a struggle.

Though Limeroad were the first ones to venture into the women-centric market, there are a number of competitors emerging in this vertical focusing entirely on women and the way they shop. Zivame is one such platform which is into providing lingerie for women. Backed by Tiger Global, Roposo is another fashion discovery platform
exclusively for women.