VISHNU ERA 11

4
LEADER SPEAK
Mr Ganesh Subramanian,
Founder and CEO, Stylumia
A QUARTERLY NEWS PUBLICATION FROM SRI VISHNU EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY
Mr. Ganesh Subramanian is the Founder & CEO of Stylumia Intelligence Technology Private Limited. The company's mission is to enable
fashion and lifestyle Brands, Retailers and Producers all over the world, provide customer-right products at the right time, at the right
place and at the right price, using deep technology. He has over 20 years of rich and diverse experience in the retail and fashion industry
where he created many powerful private brands and established a wide selection of brand partnerships. He worked as Chief
Merchandising Officer, Chief Operating Officer and as Head (New Initiatives) between April, 2015 and October, 2015 before starting his
own company Stylumia in October, 2015. He served as the Vice President of Softlines (Fashion, Footwear and Accessories) business of
the Bharti - Walmart joint venture where he helped establish and reposition fashion in the hypermarket business. He has earlier played a
key role in the making of Reliance Trends as its Asst. Vice President - Apparel and was also instrumental in the launch of super premium
brand Tommy Hilfiger (an Arvind Brands joint venture) in India during his tenure as their Head of Operations.
Could you please tell us about your journey from a student at
Institute of Supply Management, USA to Founder & CEO,
Stylumia?
Early part of my career, after college, was about having a good
brand name behind me and a good company, so I joined Coats
India as management trainee. My First job was fiber to thread,
second was thread to fabric (Manifattura di valle Brembana, an
Indo-Italian joint venture) to establish a European quality
fabric from India serving international brands like Hugo Boss,
PVH etc. Then I started to design my career going closer to
consumer. I loved serving consumers. Then I moved from hard
core textiles to branded apparel business through Indus
League, Arvind and Tommy Hilfiger. My first move into retail
was with Reliance Trends. Seeing the challenges in Indian
retail scaling, Walmart came as a huge opportunity, which
helped me learn scaling any business. While thinking of
starting something on my own in e-commerce , when it was
just picking up in 2012, I met the founder of Myntra, we saw a
connect and I joined Myntra. Last four years have been a great
learning period at supersonic speed particularly being part of
Myntra scaling from 20 million USD run rate to 500 million USD
run rate when I left.
Experience at Myntra gave me an insight on how technology
helps scale business and solve real life problems. Having been
in fashion business for a long period, I never thought
technology could be used to drive key decisions. With
developments in deep learning, computer vision and Artificial
Intelligence, I wanted to contribute to key decision making in
fashion business. That's how Stylumia was born.
What made you choose fashion and marketing after doing a
Bachelor's course in Technology?
My passion to serve consumers and I always saw a great
opportunity, learning and growth there.
What is Disruptive innovation? Kindly let us know the
disruptive innovation in Fashion Industry and especially @
Myntra ?
Disruptive innovation is about breaking the rules of the game or
create new rules and create an all new opportunity. When I
joined Myntra, people used to ask me “who would buy fashion
online?, fashion is a touch and feel business, books are fine, but
not fashion”. With sheer focus, consumer centricity and
innovation, Myntra today is one of the leading fashion retailers
in the country with even International brands launching first
through Myntra.
Throw some light on AI-led fashion intelligence platform
initiated by your Stylumia Intelligence Technology Pvt Ltd ?
Fashion business is one of the most challenging businesses to
operate. Long lead times and short product life cycles
compound the complexity of the business. Many decisions are
made for the future and the current with minimal available data
and a fair amount of judgement.
Having worked in the trenches for many years in the industry,
we started out by asking this question: can machines jump in
here with more reliable, data-driven and actionable
suggestions to help design professionals and consumers alike,
in real-time?
The answer to this is what we are chasing at Stylumia. We are
applying the advances in AI and computer vision to model,
analyse and derive actionable intelligence from the
unstructured data sources. The intelligence of our models
would be derived from data sources like images, user behavior
data, textual descriptions on social media or implicit signals to
be mined from the retail sites: by using machine learning
approaches.
Having chosen this direction, we are out to enable the fashion
and lifestyle professionals across the globe in making laser
edge informed decisions for current course corrections and
future directions.
Where do you see Stylumia in the next five years?
We see Stylumia becoming the go to solution provider for every
fashion professional in the world. We would have moved from
reactive to in-line, to predictive. If I may say so “Bloomberg of
Fashion”.
One of the key characteristic of your marvelous career is
leadership. What traits must a leader possess in the 21st
century organizations?
Leader is one, who learns constantly. He believes in people and
creates leaders and he himself goes to the background.
Communication is a very important trait. Humility helps him to
be a learner always.
During graduation, a lot of students aspire to be
entrepreneurs. What qualities according to you are must for
a good entrepreneur?
Ambition, Passion and necessary Skills for what one wants to
do. You are your ambition!
In the present day scenario, Innovation is the key to success
for any company. What's your take on this?
Keep asking why? 3,5,7 times till you get stuck. Innovation
follows.
What do you think of the popular opinion that hard work isn't
enough to rise up the ranks?
Hard work with smartness takes you forward faster. You are as
smart as your knowledge and application.
What advice do you give for students aspiring to be future
trailblazers in Fashion Industry and other related fields?
Keep learning every day, every day is day one. Read a lot!
You must have faced many challenges in your professional
life. What was the toughest one? How could you overcome?
I always moved to jobs which I was not aware of (not
experienced in). I call this as “zero knowledge advantage”. This
is a challenge too. The way I managed it is to approach any role
from first principles. I always asked “what is the best in the
world?” and “what could be next?”
We've seen a video in YouTube which was titled "Ganesh
Subramanian farewell video @ Myntra” where people
describe you as a colleague more than a boss. How do you
manage to bring the best out in each individual?
Respect everyone, treat your colleagues as friends and support
them in times of need. Challenge them enough for them to
learn. Help them become better persons.
Do you think Indian fashion has influence over the Western
world?
Yes, many luxury brands of the world take inspiration from
India.
Where you draw your inspiration from?
I am fan of Nature. Most of my inspiration comes from reading.
What is your Philosophy of life? Any Favorite quotes?
Life is finite. What is the biggest size of problem that you want
to take in this finite life and solve? There is no past, no future,
there is only this moment. Be alive, take action, you will keep
moving forward. Take risks, not taking them would be the
biggest risk.