Meet the SHEROES - Mansi Gupta

India has always been known for its traditions and hand-crafted items. In fact, our ethnic products are popular the world over. It's common to see tourists from across the world sporting ethnic Indian silver jewellery, for instance. When Mansi Gupta was studying at the Wharton Business School, she identified this a potential business opportunity and that's how Tjori came about. 

Let's see what she wants to share with us today,

How did the idea of Tjori come about?
The concept of Tjori stroke my mind when I was studying at the Wharton Business School. It was during this time that I understood the demand hand-crafted products had outside India. During my stay at Wharton, we were taken to Morocco on a trip and that is where I understood that hand-crafted products were sold at much hugher rates by the time they reached the end consumers. I wanted to eliminate this extra money-charge and make sure that handcrafted products would reach people easily at lesser prices. I was always passionate about hand-made items.

So, Tjori was started as a platform to make Indian hand-crafted products reach USA without any hurdles and later on as we grew, our focus grew too from just India to across the globe.

How is Tjori different from other e-commerce platforms offering similar products?
Well, Tjori basically works on the first come first serve kind of platform where offers are displayed LIVE for a span of 15 days and then they vanish. This kind of flash sales model we can see nowadays in the mobile market but is not that common in the hand-crafted products market.

Also, we have products which we get directly from authentic artisans who have worked day and night hard on the products to make sure they look unique and elegant when the end users actually use them. So, we feel we are quite different from many other e-commerce platforms out there.

What are the top 3 things to keep in mind when running an e-commerce business?
E-commerce is all about process management and numbers, it is quite amazing to see how a well managed process is scalable just by acting on the numbers appropriately. 
In addition, the ability to interact with your customers one on one as a business is quite incredible, whether that is via social media forums, mailers etc. 

Having the right metrics across verticals and chasing them is the key to performance. The ability to provide convenience to the customers without physically being present there can only be achieved by well managed processes and operations. 

What are the biggest challenges you face in this industry?
This is quite exciting a space and we get a lot of thrill in carving this niche that we serve, with ability to stay differentiated and unique. This requires constant pouring of new ideas everyday and to build the excitement of bringing something new everyday which is differentiated and unique motivates us.

What tips would you give other Sheroes aspiring to start their own ventures?
First and foremost, I would recommend that you keep your cool and work with full dedication.  Also, I believe that it is important to be friendly with your coworkers.

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