Saurabh Chauhan on The Future of Retail, Scaling E-Commerce in Frontier Markets & Startup Turnarounds - E16

Saurabh Chauhan is a Rocket Internet veteran who has led two of the portfolio ventures in Asia. As Managing Director, he built and launched Daraz Sri Lanka from zero to over sixty employees and achieved 3X growth in gross merchandise value every year in this frontier market in partnership with strategic brands, such as Unilever and Hutch.

Daraz Group was one of the fastest growing e-commerce marketplaces across five countries in APAC and was acquired by Alibaba in 2018 for an estimated $200 million. More recently, Saurabh led a turnaround for Rocket Internet's Vaniday, a beauty services platform where he successfully raised a seven-digit bridge funding from leading European investors and pivoted the business towards a SaaS enabled marketplace. Prior to Rocket Internet, he worked in management consulting at McKinsey & Company across India, U.S, Australia and Dubai.

He is also a mentor at Iterative VC - a YC- Combinator style accelerator focused exclusively on Southeast Asia, where he advises startups on international expansion and scaling marketplace commercials and operations.

Saurabh completed his Bachelor's in Business from S.S College of Business Studies, Delhi University and cleared level II of the Chartered Financial Analyst program. His hobbies are trekking, reading and gaming. You can connect with him at Linkedin in our shownotes at linkedin.com/in/saurabh-chauhan

You can find the shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/saurabh-chauhan

You can find our community discussions on this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/16-saurabh-chauh-managing-director-of-daraz-sri-lanka