Meet Radhika Aggarwal, the first woman in India’s unicorn club

For Radhika Aggarwal, co-founder of India’s newest startup unicorn, ShopClues, it’s not so much about being the only girl in an all-boys club as it is about finding passion.

When ShopClues, an ecommerce store that likes to call itself “the online marketplace for masses,” announced a fresh round of funding that valued the company at US$1.1 billion, it marked another shift in the country’s booming startup industry.

With the new valuation, India got its first big-shot female co-founder: the first woman – so far – to break into the unicorn club.

But ask Radhika, and she’ll make no fuss of it.

ShopClues has bigger things to focus on at the moment, like turning profitable. As chief business officer, Radhika has a tough task ahead.

“We are confident that our capital efficiency and execution will make this our last fund raise before we become profitable with the eventual IPO in 2017,” Radhika said. That is even before Flipkart, India’s largest ecommerce player, is expected to go public.

See: 5 tips from female entrepreneurs

Radhika joined her husband Sandeep Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi to set up ShopClues in 2011, targeting India’s new middle class, rather than the upmarket mall goer. The firm counts GIC, the largest sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, Tiger Global, and Nexus Venture Partners as investors.

While industry bigwigs like Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal make the biggest chunk of their sales from mobile phones and electronics, Radhika tempts India’s growing number of web shoppers with US$4 bed sheets and towels. Home furnishings are the company’s biggest sales drivers.

“The only way to take the common man online was to make it resemble the local market,” Radhika told Tech In Asia. “Four years on, we have about 350,000 small and medium sellers on the platform, and 14 million registered users.”

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Despite being at the center of Asia’s startup boom, India has seen very few female entrepreneurs who have made it to the big league. While that is consistent with the imbalance seen in tech workplaces across the world and in Silicon Valley, a traditional mindset in India often becomes a natural barrier for women in the country.