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Kapila GuptaFounder and CEO at Luxurystation.com, which is an initiative to provide a platform to luxury retail consumers in India to shop brands that they don’t have access to at a price which is significantly more competitive than buying from a retail/ brand store and even to places where stores do not exist.
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Meet Kapila Gupta
Kapila Gupta was already raising two young girls, when she daringly birthed her third baby – an e-commerce portal for locally unavailable luxury products.
Kapila Gupta, a seasoned chartered accountant-turned-mother, was on a two-year long sabbatical to raise her children. She decided not to return to the grind, and instead, follow her lifelong dream of running a business. Thus, Luxurystation.com was born. The platform offers an authenticity guarantee to the extent of twice the invoice price.
A chartered accountant and B.Com Honours student from SRCC, 36-year-old Kapila spent a whole decade in professional services, working with PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. After a successful stint with the consulting giant, she decided to take a break to care for her two beautiful daughters.
When her younger daughter turned one, she thought of returning to work. Even as making inroads back to her old job wasn’t difficult, having a clean slate left the possibilities wide open, especially to follow her heart on a dream she had nurtured for a while. “I had the option to rejoin, but I had always aspired to attempt something of my own, something which was more challenging.”
She was definitely apprehensive, to say the least, as this meant a complete transition from everything she was familiar with. At the same time, she deeply cherished all the beautiful moments of motherhood. “Apart from the need of creating something of my own, I thought my own venture will give me more flexibility,” she inferred.
The thought behind Luxurystation.com was born when Kapil was looking for a handbag of a brand that was not launched in India. “I wanted to order it online from a UK-based portal but felt reluctant due to much higher landed price and the time they would take for delivery,” she recalls.
She then decided to pull up some numbers on the popular luxury brands unavailable in India and their product prices across the globe. Her research revealed that the price differential for brands available in India was at a significant premium to the European prices and the presence of these brands was restricted to the metros. She observed that the store rentals and running costs were making it difficult for these brands to expand pan-India. It was then that she started to work on this concept, of bringing international luxury brands, especially the ones that are unavailable or scarcely available in India, to one’s doorstep, through an experiential e-commerce platform.
The inventory-led model offers its customers both the option to visit their studio or seek the comfort of viewing the products online. They deliver pan-India, taking not more than three to four days to execute any order, in any corner of the country. Since they started, they also diversified into pre-owned luxury goods, where the customers can either sell directly, consign,or even exchange it with new products. Luxurystation.com is one of the only platforms in India to offer both new and pre-owned products.
With a soft launch in March 2015, and taking on the market all guns blazing in October 2015, at present, the website has 5,000 registered users, of which, 250 have actually shopped with them,and 50 percent of them returned as repeat customers.They execute around 50 to 75 transactions a month.
The platform was recently listed as one of the recommended sellers of Authenticate First, one of the largest US-based company for certification of authentic luxury products, which helped them address customers concerns about authenticity.
Coming up from their luscious brewery by the end of the month, are refurbishment services for luxury products, like the bag spa service. They recently introduced fragrances and will soon be adding footwear, watches, and apparel to their menu. “We are now focusing to expand product range, product categories as well as some interesting concepts like celebrity closet.
Kapila Gupta, a seasoned chartered accountant-turned-mother, was on a two-year long sabbatical to raise her children. She decided not to return to the grind, and instead, follow her lifelong dream of running a business. Thus, Luxurystation.com was born. The platform offers an authenticity guarantee to the extent of twice the invoice price.
A chartered accountant and B.Com Honours student from SRCC, 36-year-old Kapila spent a whole decade in professional services, working with PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. After a successful stint with the consulting giant, she decided to take a break to care for her two beautiful daughters.
When her younger daughter turned one, she thought of returning to work. Even as making inroads back to her old job wasn’t difficult, having a clean slate left the possibilities wide open, especially to follow her heart on a dream she had nurtured for a while. “I had the option to rejoin, but I had always aspired to attempt something of my own, something which was more challenging.”
She was definitely apprehensive, to say the least, as this meant a complete transition from everything she was familiar with. At the same time, she deeply cherished all the beautiful moments of motherhood. “Apart from the need of creating something of my own, I thought my own venture will give me more flexibility,” she inferred.
The thought behind Luxurystation.com was born when Kapil was looking for a handbag of a brand that was not launched in India. “I wanted to order it online from a UK-based portal but felt reluctant due to much higher landed price and the time they would take for delivery,” she recalls.
She then decided to pull up some numbers on the popular luxury brands unavailable in India and their product prices across the globe. Her research revealed that the price differential for brands available in India was at a significant premium to the European prices and the presence of these brands was restricted to the metros. She observed that the store rentals and running costs were making it difficult for these brands to expand pan-India. It was then that she started to work on this concept, of bringing international luxury brands, especially the ones that are unavailable or scarcely available in India, to one’s doorstep, through an experiential e-commerce platform.
The inventory-led model offers its customers both the option to visit their studio or seek the comfort of viewing the products online. They deliver pan-India, taking not more than three to four days to execute any order, in any corner of the country. Since they started, they also diversified into pre-owned luxury goods, where the customers can either sell directly, consign,or even exchange it with new products. Luxurystation.com is one of the only platforms in India to offer both new and pre-owned products.
With a soft launch in March 2015, and taking on the market all guns blazing in October 2015, at present, the website has 5,000 registered users, of which, 250 have actually shopped with them,and 50 percent of them returned as repeat customers.They execute around 50 to 75 transactions a month.
The platform was recently listed as one of the recommended sellers of Authenticate First, one of the largest US-based company for certification of authentic luxury products, which helped them address customers concerns about authenticity.
Coming up from their luscious brewery by the end of the month, are refurbishment services for luxury products, like the bag spa service. They recently introduced fragrances and will soon be adding footwear, watches, and apparel to their menu. “We are now focusing to expand product range, product categories as well as some interesting concepts like celebrity closet.
