Tag: Plum

Shivani Behl_Chief Marketing Officer_Plum
Business

D2C Brand Plum strengthens leadership team; appoints Shivani Behl as Chief Marketing Officer and Gaurav Sarda as Chief Financial Officer

Sep 28, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Chief Financial Officer, #Chief Marketing Officer, #Founder & CEO, #Gaurav Sarda, #Plum, #Shankar Prasad, #Shivani Behl

Mumbai: Plum – a home-grown, 100% vegan, PETA certified, clean beauty brand is strengthening its leadership team as it looks to deepen its omni-channel network across geographies, expand its product offering across newer segments and drive business transformation. The company has announced the appointment of Shivani Behl as Chief Marketing Officer and Gaurav Sarda as Chief Financial Officer. The new appointees will work closely with Shankar Prasad, Founder & CEO, to further accelerate growth of brand Plum.

With over 150 SKUs, Plum has steadily built its customer base on both online and offline platforms. In addition to being among the top new-age beauty brands online, the brand also now reaches over 225 towns and cities in India, through 750+ assisted outlets, and over 10,000 unassisted outlets – growing month-on-month.

Shivani brings with her 15+ years of diverse experience across sales and marketing and has worked on building iconic brands across retail, FMCD, and beauty sectors. She has held leadership positions at Lakme Lever, Shoppers Stop and Reliance Brands. At Plum she will be responsible for scaling growth across the levers of brand and marketing, partnerships, community culture and engagement, and product innovation.

On her appointment, Shivani said, “It is an interesting juncture for D2C Beauty brands and Plum in particular. I am excited to take this opportunity to architect a brand-first approach to drive exponential growth at Plum. I believe Plum’s potential is unlimited, and look forward to working with the entire Plum team to build and accelerate the brand’s momentum in the months and years to come.”

Further, the finance division of the company gets strengthened with the joining of Gaurav Sarda as Chief Financial Officer. With rich experience of more than 14 years, he last served as Head – Manufacturing Commercial at Marico Limited. At Plum, Gaurav will work closely with the rest of the senior leadership team to drive and grow the company’s financial and development strategy.

Gaurav Sarda_Chief Financial Officer_Plum
Gaurav Sarda_Chief Financial Officer_Plum

Gaurav commented, “The path ahead is an exciting one. As the company continues to scale, I look forward to leveraging my background to implement the next phase of operational excellence and further strengthen the strong financial foundation, aligning it to the rapid growth and enabling overall business excellence.”

On the new appointments, Shankar Prasad, CEO & Founder Plum said, “We are thrilled to welcome Shivani and Gaurav to our core leadership team as we embark on our next phase of growth. Both of them bring a wealth of experience and best practices from leading companies. Their values, skills, and expertise will complement the functional strength of our current top leadership team comprising CD Prabhakar (CBO, Retail) and Girish Kulkarni (Head of SCM & Technology). Together, we look forward to shaping the company into something we all can be proud of.”

Founded in 2013, Plum is a leading, 100% vegan, cruelty-free & non-toxic beauty brand with a strong portfolio in skincare, hair care, personal care, and makeup. The brand is driven by a strong leadership & investor team focused on building value for – People, the Planet, and Profit-sharing participants. On a path of rapid, sustainable, fundamentals-driven growth with a blend of the right product and strong brand identity, Plum finds itself in a leadership position with strong financials, experiencing a 2.5X growth Y-O-Y.

Indian employee insurance provider Plum
Business World

Plum raises US$4.1m to provide group health insurance to SMEs, starting from Rs.2/day

Nov 26, 2020 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #corporate health insurance, #Indian employee insurance provider Plum, #Plum

Bengaluru: On a mission to revolutionise corporate health insurance, Indian employee insurance provider Plum has announced fundraising of US$4.1 million, led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and Tanglin Venture Partners. Existing investors, including Incubate Fund, also participated in the round. The funding will be used to expand into new markets, build new distribution channels, hire top talent and further develop product and tech, which is the backbone of Plum.

The company is part of the fourth cohort of Surge, a bi-annual scale-up program for startups in India and Southeast Asia.

Launched in March 2020, Plum is poised to reinvent how group health insurance works in India by making it affordable and accessible for businesses of all sizes. India currently has one of the lowest penetration rates for health insurance in the world, with only 18% of urban employees and 14% of rural areas receiving coverage of some kind. Over 50 million Indians fall into poverty every year due to their inability to finance health issues.

Plum’s easy-to-use health platform coupled with transparent pricing aims to help more businesses reap the benefits of insurance for their employees. Plum provides coverage for as little as $10 per year per person.

Many Indian businesses find the insurance purchasing process to be tedious, opaque and costly, with the entire process taking months to set up. To address these issues, Plum has negotiated and forged new underwriting and fraud detection measures with a wide range of insurance companies. This helps Plum provide businesses and their employees with more flexibility, greater customisation and a high-quality health insurance experience.

Going beyond traditional insurance coverage, Plum has partnered with best-in-class healthcare providers in dental care, fitness, diet and nutrition plans, yoga, virtual doctor consultations and mental health care.

Focusing on delivering a seamless customer experience, the startup provides companies with a dashboard to easily manage employees’ insurance and an employee app with 24/7 support for queries, claims, and other related issues.

Plum has seen 200% growth quarter-on-quarter, securing US$1 million worth of insurance premiums within just the first three quarters of launch. The platform is currently used by more than 200 companies, including large organisations such as Twilio, Label Life, Classplus, Happay and Sunidhi Group.

“One critical illness can make a family fall below the poverty line – so Plum has reimagined the traditional space of healthcare insurance to make it more affordable, simple, and comprehensive – a far cry from the complicated products and opaque pricing most businesses have to navigate. With COVID-19 further elevating the need for personal protection, companies with as few as five employees can set up high-quality health coverage in less than an hour at a discounted price previously available only to large corporates,” said Abhishek Poddar, co-founder of Plum.

“While the Indian government has several initiatives that offer free health coverage to India’s vulnerable populations, there is a sizable audience without adequate protection. The group insurance health market in India is projected to grow to USD 13.4 billion by 2025 and will see the rise of innovative insurance products not available in advanced markets. Plum hopes to provide 700 million people with employer-sponsored insurance and become the de facto health insurance platform for one million corporates in India,” he added.

Plum does not discriminate when it comes to helping businesses across a variety of sizes receive the coverage they need. Collaborative customer onboarding platform Rocketlane saw the benefits offered by Plum even when it was a start-up with just eight employees.

“At a stage when our company was considered too small for most insurance providers, Plum gave us access to good quality healthcare protection for our teams and families. They have an exceptional product designed to suit the needs of small and mid-size organizations. We were up and running within 24 hours – and their tailor-made offerings enabled us to save 40% of what we would have spent on the more traditional, expensive health insurance products available in the market,” said Srikrishnan Ganesan, founder of Rocketlane.