Exclusive: ShopClues founder Radhika Ghai starts up again with Kindlife

ShopClues co-founder Radhika Ghai is back with her second venture. The Gurugram-based entrepreneur has launched Kindlife.in, a marketplace for organic products across several categories, according to sources. This comes less than two years after her previous venture ShopClues, an online marketplace, was acquired by Singapore’s e-commerce firm Qoo10 in October 2019. 

“Radhika has started her new company in the space of ‘clean’ living brands,” said one of the sources cited above, requesting anonymity. “It will be under the categories of home, cosmetics, etc.”

Ghai launched Kindlife in July 2020 along with Vidit Jain, who was previously an associate director of marketing at Shopclues.com. Kindlife, as many commerce websites these days, has a community and social element to it. The website has not only listed products that can be bought but also has tabs with different spaces, pages and forums across topics such as nutrition, grooming and wellness, among others. 

“To carry on in India and abroad the business of marketing and trading of all varieties of goods, products, rendering services through e-commerce, internet advertising, mobile internet, online content, the business of social media platform and off-line conventional business from all means,” reads the company’s memorandum of association, explaining the purpose of the business. 

Ghai has incorporated three new entities namely: Alphacama Pvt Ltd , Deltacama Pvt Ltd and Zetacama Pvt Ltd. Kindlife’s website has mentioned Alphacama as the parent entity for the brand with Vidit Jain as the director. He is also a director for the other two entities along with Ghai. 

Ghai’s first venture Shopclues was co-founded in 2011 along with Sandeep Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi. ShopClues initially garnered ample investor interest, raised a good chunk of money and even touched the coveted $1 billion valuation during its funding in 2016 when it raised $140 million from Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Tiger Global Management and Nexus Venture Partners. ShopClues was focused on selling products across electronics, home and lifestyle categories targeting customers in small towns and cities. 

However, years later, as competition heightened, the company was unable to keep up and was eventually acquired in an all-stock deal which reportedly valued the firm between $50 to $80 million — slashed more than 90% from its peak valuation. 

According to sources, Kindlife is also in talks with several top-notch angels to raise its maiden funding round. Detailed queries sent to Ghai on Sunday didn’t elicit any response. We will update the story in case she responds.

With this new company, Ghai joins the list of several storied entrepreneurs who have gone on to start their second ventures. Kunal Shah, Jitendra Gupta, Ashish Kashyap are some of the notable names in the list. The trio also had raised one of the largest seed rounds ($25-30) million for their new ventures.