This solo woman founder is revolutionising the way people shop online with the unique e-commerce platform

Launched in Oct  2022 by Divya Manjari, Redfynd is an AI-powered platform for e-commerce aiming to transform the online shopping experience for consumers in India. Since its inception a year ago, the platform has already helped over a million users in shopping efficiently, saving them time and money. Technologist-turned-entrepreneur Divya Manjari narrates her inspiring journey to Startup Pedia.

Divya, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and Indian School of Business (ISB), has more than 20 years of experience in technology and retail/e-commerce. Her career includes significant roles at top retailers such as Gap, Nordstrom, Sears, and Unilever, where she contributed to developing and launching retail and e-commerce applications. Before taking the leap into entrepreneurship with Redfynd, Divya was part of the Azure division at Microsoft, leaving behind a successful corporate career to pursue her entrepreneurial vision.

Balancing a demanding job and raising two children, Divya found the task of shopping for her family's growing needs increasingly challenging. Frustrated with the time lost in traffic, struggling to find parking at malls, and waiting in long checkout queues, online shopping seemed like the easier option. However, this option came with its own set of issues, as Divya encountered several inefficiencies within the online shopping experience.

Founder & CEO at Redfynd

Divya explained the issue while speaking to Startup Pedia and said, “Before finalizing a product and buying it online, we usually compare the desired product on various e-commerce platforms for better price, quality, and brand and whether they ship it to your address. This process of comparing and discovering the final suitable product is time-consuming and frustrating.”

According to a report by Bain and Company, the e-commerce market in 2021, was as big as $50 billion. The report also revealed that India had about 190 million online shoppers in 2021, which made India the third-largest online shopper base globally. Hence, in 1-2 years, India may take over the US shopper base. Although the number of online shoppers has been increasing rapidly, nothing much has changed as to the way online shopping is done.

“I was really amazed that there's been so much technological advancement, but that's not translating into online shopping. You're still shopping the same way for years. Not much has changed,” said entrepreneur Divya Manjari.

In 2020, the Indian e-commerce market was exploding and while Myntra had reigned the online fashion market for a long time, there were many new entrants like Ajio, Nykaa Fashion as well as brick and mortar stores like Lifestyle, Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop etc building their online presence.

Brands were selling their products through their own websites as well as other channels. After Covid, more and more users turned to online shopping as they realized the convenience as well as ability to get better deals as the online stores competed in price wars to attract customers. However, a unified platform to explore various brands, compare prices, check sizes and assess delivery options was missing. 

Identifying this void, Divya set out to create a comprehensive platform, Redfynd, to allow consumers to effortlessly discover and purchase from an extensive range of online stores all in one place.

“Redfynd leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to make consumers' online shopping journeys quick and effortless. Redfynd uses computer vision and LLMs to detect the same product sold across different stores. It has developed advanced features like image search to find a product by an image or search by a product link from an online store to check if that product is sold anywhere else.” added Divya.

With a thriving e-commerce ecosystem in India, it’s very easy to build online stores today and there have been a large number of homegrown brands with high quality, artisanal and sustainable products. However the brands have struggled to get initial traction and build visibility.

In the journey of making the users' online shopping experience seamless, Redfynd is helping these brands in multiple ways to grow by giving them exposure to lakhs of buyers looking for similar products. It provides insights on trends and customer behavior which is helpful for brands in innovating and assortment planning for their products and to meet the expectations of the consumers. 

Moreover, brands can also use Redfynd’s service for creating captivating ads and track the ads performances for better engagement and growth. The AI powered platform predicts a wide range of varieties for every product under fashion segment with personalization to curate the products that users are most likely to buy. 

Through her one of a  kind platform- Redfynd, Divya is revolutionizing the fashion  and e-commerce industry by using technology at its core. Redfynd, which was started with just an idea, now has six million products, 30000 brands, and 100+ stores across fashion and beauty products. 

As the number of products and brands multiplied on Redfynd, so did the number of visitors over the months. Starting with only 100–200 visitors on the e-commerce platform per day, now the number of visitors on Redfynd is 2 lakh per month and growing. 

Redfynd founder Divya Manjari plans to expand her platform to increase coverage of online stores, geographical expansion to US and Europe and building a global checkout system.