Lakshmi Naga Potluri

Head of Asia Business Development

2021 - Current

B Capital Group is a global firm specializing in equity investing in venture and growth-stage companies that have achieved traction with customers. Through our extensive global network and exclusive partnership with The Boston Consulting Group, B Capital helps high growth startups navigate business challenges, raise capital, and attract talented leadership at key points of their journeys to scale. For more information, visit http://www.bcapgroup.com/. As Head of Asia Portfolio Business Development my role is to help our SaaS portfolio companies expand within the Asia Pacific region. July -Dec 2021 - Consultant

Independent Director

2021

Founding Member, Global Fintech Forum

2021

Global Fintech Forum is on a mission to enhance Asia's fintech startups and to provide a platform to accelerate the fintech startups with access to investors, sandbox. With a network of 1000 financial services professionals, digital leaders and innovation heads who are on the same mission, this forum works closely with industry associations, investors, south east asian trade bodies, innovation hubs and the startup ecosystem to power innovation in the sector.

Chief Executive Officer | Partner

2017 - 2021

India's first boutique innovation consulting firm, focused on providing innovation services to corporates, governments and municipalities across the world. We bring global innovation from US, Israel, Korea, Germany to your organization/entity to create innovative, impactful and cutting edge solutions to suit your requirements. • Created India’s first innovation platform for bridging the gap between government enterprises/traditional businesses, corporates and startups(India & global) to generate disruptive value for all stakeholders; • Advised on startup policy and implementation with four government cities/states looking for ways to accelerate their local startup ecosystem; Government of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra (Thane, Pimpri Chinchwad) • Conceptualized and rolled out sector agnostic Lighthouse Accelerator program, India’s first two way accelerator program in collaboration with Israel & Hong Kong entities, onboarded marquee mentors, investors and successfully running cohorts(fintech, proptech, healthtech, enterprise and consumertech) • Responsible for driving adoption of new and emerging transformative technologies amongst corporates and governments through multiple hackathons/pitchfest, corporate innovation programs across India, Israel, Paris, UK etc., • Drive venture investing for family offices and corporates to help make strategic investments and also to enable organizations to acquire relevant startups(completed 3 acquisitions, facilitated 7 investments ) >>The above requires constant interaction with the global startup ecosystem, collaborating with startups, VCs, Incubators, accelerators, industry bodies etc., for deal origination, portfolio advancement staying on top of the emerging trends and for identifying white spaces THANE GLOBAL IMPACT HUB: http://www.thaneglobalimpacthub.com/

Board Observer

2014 - 2020

VNS Advisors

2015 - 2019

We work closely with early and mid stage startups (and growth companies) to assist entrepreneurs towards building and scaling businesses. We work closely with the teams to help them crystallise their strategies, prepare their go-to market strategy, introduce them to relevant industry contacts. In businesses that are capital intensive or looking to scale rapidly we guide them on fund raising. Right from the business model, the pitch decks(presentations), prepare them for the investor presentations through direct one-one coaching, introduction to subject matter experts. 1.Driverskart.com (on demand drivers platform that was successfully acquired by DriveU) 2. Purganics(India's first fully organic line of feminine hygiene products) 3. Zaamordiamonds (promoted by one of the most prestigious jewellery brand in South India, an initiative of the VB group)h 4. NawaabSheikh, one of the first cloudkitchens that successfully expanded through a franchise model and was among the top two biryani serving destinations in Chennai and more...

Chief of Staff/Chief Growth Officer

2016 - 2017

• Collaborated with key leadership for turning around P&L(USD 22mn) by revising digital strategy, processes, building world class team and with continuous performance driven decision making Network 18 Digital among the top two digital media houses in India touching over 100 million unique visitors in a two year period; vernacular digital content platform was launched and attained #1 positioning in the category during this time • Formulate and implement overall digital strategy and be involved in building a sustainable digital business, in house • Set the vision and enabled team to develop new revenue channels to pre-empt industry changes across subscription, branded content and strategic syndications(10% revenue contributor) to solidify the position of the business • Created brand positioning through credible partnerships for new revenue channels and created valuable international IP for the first time in the digital business for the group also driving incremental 10% revenues within first year of launch

Angel Investor

2011 - 2017

One of the nation's active sector agnostic Angel investment community - was started with the objective of fostering Entrepreneurship with prime focus on nurturing and mentoring new generation entrepreneurs. http://www.thechennaiangels.com/aboutus.html Investor in travellingspoon.com, everestedusys pvt. ltd(qedquest) and velvetcase.com

Country Director(Shopify)

2013 - 2014

• Complete responsibility for P&L, establishing operations from zero to full-fledged sales, customer support, marketing and product teams comprising of core 10 member team and an extended 70 member team; • Devised the end to end marketing strategy, drove digital channels(PPC, Affiliate, Social etc.,) , funnel management, identified partners, agencies and used analytics driven decision to grow the revenues 15x times in 18 months; 100x increase in customers • Take customer feedback to establish localized product features and changed the product to suit local market requirements, established merchant education platforms and strategized the India Launch to displace existing players • Set up pan India direct sales channels in 8 key cities and onboarded key telecom partner Airtel in a span of 3 months • Increased web traffic to shopify.in site 6x times with 1000 record sign ups in one week establishing Shopify among the top 3 ecommerce platforms in the country within 7 months • Set strategy to enable highest customer retention rate in Shopify India history for first year of operation while managing the financial and operational budgets achieving P&L objective by driving long term subscriptions SKILLS: Developing and scaling new markets, Digital Marketing, Dealer- Distributor network, B2B Sales operations Note: This engagement was a Shopify-Singtel partnership

Managing Director/Co-Founder, Rocket Internet incubation,www.jabong.com

2011 - 2012

• Integral in establishing and growing the company from inception, hiring senior management and building a motivated 400+ person high performance team within 5 months • Worked closely to setup the key marketing team across SEO, SEM, Social channels; devised strategy, brought in highly performance driven decision making and drove daily metric monitoring required for B2C e-commerce business • Jabong onboarded 300 + lifestyle brands, achieved 100% growth week on week in visitors, transactions and within 3 months of launch became the top 100 websites for online purchases (vs industry standards of upto 18months) • Launched 3 new categories in 21 days from design, planning to execution with low inventory risk. Category contribution overshot expectations and achieved 100% growth and is targeted to contribute 65% of total sale • Strategized and executed highly successful and innovative promotion (first in India offering of 80 unique European brands) that increased sales across categories 4 fold • Instrumental in executing the TVC campaign with huge success that quadrupled visitors and sales Now part of Walmart