Swati Gupta — Co-Founder, Industrybuying.com
A founding member of Industrybuying.com, Swati Gupta, comes with over a decade experience in Management Consulting, Supply Chain Management and Private Equity Operational Advisory Business. She has held a myriad of leadership positions across geographies starting with Bain & Co. which she joined immediately after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University.
Industrybuying.com, today is one of the leading online platforms, featuring an exclusive range of utility products for all industrial purposes. In her current role, Swati administers the online portal’s business, along with product development, technology, marketing and supply chain. Additionally, she also provides the overall leadership for the company’s operations in the country.
Swati has sailed through several significant milestones in the course of her professional career. The first milestone was initializing industrybuying.com, as a bootstrapped company. This was followed by another critical milestone of acquiring prevalent brands as clients like Escorts and Havells, only through word of mouth. This helped the founding team sustain the company for quite a while. Raising series ‘A’ funding in December 2014, marked the third milestone in her career, as she continues with her endeavors in scaling the concept.
Based in Delhi, Swati holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Delhi College of Engineering. She furthered her educational qualifications with a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. Today she envisions making Industrybuying.com in to the biggest horizontal B2B e-commerce marketplace in India, disrupting the B2B trading in the country.
Apart from being a working woman, her profile also entails the personal responsibilities of motherhood. Swati has two children and she loves to spend most of her leisure time with them — with lots of storytelling, playing and watching cartoons. Her other interests include dancing and reading.
High point in career
“Lots of high points – Starting Industrybuying and securing funding was one, setting up Opera Solutions India from scratch was another, getting a job at Bain straight out of US B-school without any experience was another one.”
Most challenging assignment so far
“I think bootstrap phase of Industrybuying was by far the most challenging so far – Money was hard to come by, investments needed to be made on product and people and there was lots of uncertainty ahead. That we came through not only unscathed, but with a degree of success and validation was a big boost to our efforts to make IB India’s leading business destination online.”
Greatest inspiration
“Jeff Bezos – that he started 20 years ago and still retains the speed and nimbleness that allows Amazon to be at the top, that a lot of Amazons innovations like ebooks, video, Prime have been game changers that many have emulated – they understand how to execute, that Amazons culture values hardwork and discipline.”
Most important milestone in life
“Many happiness milestones have come and gone – I am fundamentally a happy person. Getting my first job at a premier consulting firm like Bain was a high, finding the courage to quit a very well paying career and jumping into the unknown with IB was a high, hitting a higher transaction number every month is a high.”
Women are the better halves. What does it mean?
“Women and men are halves that fit, making them both whole 🙂 I see no evidence that one is better than the other.”