‘My role is to help founders succeed,’ says Good Glamm Group CEO Sukhleen Aneja
Sukhleen Aneja, CEO of the Good Glamm Group opened up at the Women on a Mission summit 2022 about transitioning from sales and marketing roles in big conglomerates to becoming a leader in a fast-rising startup.
CEO Sukhleen Aneja who took on the mantle of the beauty and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands business in December 2021, sees the D2C or direct-to-consumer sector at a cusp with a revolution waiting to happen.
“Especially, post-liberalisation when we experienced large multinational brands. One experienced a world that was so different from how it was when we were growing up versus today, the opportunity post the digital revolution has been fascinating. And now post-COVID that's been another massive inflection point,” Sukhleen said at HerStory’s Women on a Mission summit 2022.
Consumers are excessively willing to take chances on brands, she is of the firm belief. “They're clearly going behind niches which are bespoke to their personalised needs as opposed to going for mass products. So, to that extent, it's a very exciting time to be in the industry,” she added.
Sukhleen transitioned from being a marketer to a leader with the Good Glamm Group and comes with two decades of experience working with leading FMCG brands such as Hindustan Unilever and L’Oreal Paris. She was earlier the chief marketing officer (CMO) of Reckitt’s Hygiene portfolio across South Asia.
Her scaling strategy consists of keeping a close look at how the brands are playing out in the offline world as much as the online world. “There’s an opportunity of streamlining end-to-end processes in a way to scale businesses.”
She believes her sales and marketing experience has set her up for a holistic understanding of creating the consumer demand and recognising the levers required for ensuring the right availability and the right assortment at all times to create and fulfill demand.
Comparing the startup culture with legacy brands, Sukhleen is of the view that her transition has been “refreshing”. “There's so much action happening outside the large framed organisations or corporates that one absolutely ends up missing out on. What's taken me by surprise is the kind of energy with which organisations are now spearheading change. So the energy levels, the kind of talent pool and the diversity, the very fact that today you have people from tech, FMCG and non-FMCG with very varied backgrounds are all coming together. What's most interesting is how young the organisations are,” she elaborated.
At the same time, she admits to missing the framing that comes with a structured environment of corporate giants.
“But having said that, things that worked for large conglomerates, and helped them scale become opportunity areas in startups as we scale now. The important thing to realise is to find the right balance between speed and ensuring that there's enough structure to support the scale that you wish to create,” Sukhleen noted.
Finally, her advice to women looking to grow into CEO roles from a marketing and sales background is to take a chance on themselves. Additionally, she suggests keeping calm and not let fear get the better of you and to embrace the fear of failure. “Ask for help wherever you require as once you do that the fear of failure will subside,” she signs off.
A shout out to the sponsors of Women on Mission Summit 2022, an Initiative by HerStory, by YourStory -
BYJU'S, the presenting partner, and other sponsors - Kyndryl, Sequoia Spark, Zilingo, Atlassian, Akamai, Freshworks for Startups, and Netapp Excellerator.
Edited by Ramarko Sengupta