Purva Gupta, Founder of Lily, graduated as the highest rated founder in the Silicon Valley Program of Founder Institute.
Purva's record with the Founder Institute is just the most recent event in an impressive series of accomplishments. In 2009, she graduated from Shri Ram College of Commerce, the top commerce school in India with a 1% acceptance rate. After graduation, she landed a prestigious internship at Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, a leading advertising agency. An economist by education, she followed her internship with a position at Eko in its early days as a mobile payments and branchless banking startup.
In 2013, Purva began grad school at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India. In the course of her Master’s Degree program there, she worked with the Khosla Impact Fund led by Vinod Khosla, exploring the world of startups through an investor’s lens.
By 2014, Purva lived in New York with her husband, worked with the UNICEF Innovations team and attended the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute.
As if this weren't enough in those few short years, Purva moved to Silicon Valley, California when she saw an opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Although she considers her move to California and the beginning of a long-distance relationship with her husband, "one of the most painful things I've ever done. But my love and respect for my husband has only grown – he understands that Lily is my oxygen."
Purva's future accomplishments and successes weren't necessarily a "given," at least not in Purva's own eyes. In high school, she moved from a small town in India to one of the best day-boarding schools, and with the stress of the adjustment, she lost confidence. Burdened with a stammer, she found it difficult to express herself among her new peers, all very fluent in English.
She soon learned that her confidence levels improved when she dressed well and knew she looked good. When she looked good, she felt good. Her discovery led her from achievement to achievement, and now to a business in which she helps other women find that same confidence.
Through it all, she often thinks of the lessons she learned from her father, also an entrepreneur, running a family owned business. He taught her three things, lessons that might seem a little unorthodox to many American entrepreneurs, but they served Purva well:
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Everything is about sales. We constantly sell, no matter what our path in life. We sell information, ideas, items, ourselves. Become a great sales person.
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Pursue your passion, body and soul. People might call you crazy, but that's ok if you're giving your "all" to something that stirs your passion.
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Don't have a "Plan B". Raise the stakes in what you do so your only option is to succeed.
Venturing on Wild Seas: Founding Lily
Despite her lack of entrepreneurial experience, Purva Gupta succeeded, with the expert guidance and assistance of the Founder Institute, in founding Lily, a mobile and web product that helps women discover and buy clothes from their favorite brands both online and in stores.
Lily creates a personalized shopping experience for women, 95% of whom say that is a missing component in shopping today. By asking women a series of questions and using a complex algorithm and Artificial Intelligence, Lily links patterns of responses to suggestions that satisfy both emotional needs and stylish wants.
And Lily is smart! She learns and remembers as she goes, making each transaction better and more personalized than the one before.
The Lily team is a group of passionate fashion lovers, psychologists and technologists, dedicated to creating a personalized shopping experience that will send women out looking great and feeling great, with the confidence to achieve their own big dreams.
Follow Lily on Twitter @GetLilyApp, visit her on Facebook at GetLilyapp or on Linked In at PurvaGupta.
