Purplle ramps up headcount as online sales grow

Beauty e-commerce platform, Purplle has ramped up headcount to 650 with the addition of 300 employees in the last three months and plans to hire 300 more in the next six months to support the growing demand for its products.

“People added in the last three months are split across fulfilment centre (warehouse) staff, customer support, marketing, brand management, sales, technology and product”, Manish Taneja, co-founder and CEO of Purplle told BusinessLine. The company has four warehouses in Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bengaluru and Kolkata with two more coming up in Hyderabad and Guwahati.

Profitable since March 2018, Purplle recorded a three-fold increase in user registrations during its recently concluded online beauty sale with over 15,000 products from its exclusive brands such as Good Vibes, Alps Goodness, NY Bae, Stay Quirky as well as global brands like L’Oreal Paris, Maybelline, The Face Shop etc, at 3X higher discounts. As a result of increased consumer aspirations and awareness towards personal care, Purplle recorded 75 per cent of its order volumes coming from Tier-2 and -3 markets. Order volumes in the makeup’ category grew by 472 per cent and skincare’ category grew by 282 per cent on a month-on-month basis.

“Offline businesses are hit due to Covid-19 therefore, online sales are up. Skincare category has grown 60 per cent since February and makeup category came back to pre-Covid levels in June. In our recently concluded sale, we witnessed volume and value traction in the range of 300 per cent with average order values up by 10 per cent month-on-month. The most significant traction was the number of new users opting for our Elite Membership – we saw a five-fold increase in daily Elite membership sign-ups compared to typical days. Also, our elite base contributed to 20 per cent of net merchandise value during the sale period,” said Taneja.

From $25 million in FY 2019, the company doubled its revenue to $50 million in FY 2020 and says it is on track to achieve $100 million this fiscal. Purplle offers an assortment of over 47,500 SKUs across more than 1,000 third party and own brands. “Our sales were down by 80 per cent in April, but we bounced back to pre-Covid level sales in June. Sales grew by 15 per cent from pre-Covid levels in July and by 40 per cent in August to date,” said Taneja. Founded in 2012, Purplle is funded by Goldman Sachs, Verlinvest, Blume Ventures, IvyCap Ventures and JSW Ventures and has raised $50 million to date.