How to Build a Brand that Stands the Test of Time with Pankaj Vermani - fnGlobal Keynote and Roundtables (September 21, 2022)

Pankaj Vermani wears many hats: CEO, angel investor, Reiki Raj yoga practitioner, and theater performer. However, no single role defines him. According to the startup founder, each has been integral to his success.

Vermani co-founded Clovia, a lingerie and personal care brand, in 2012. Today the company has more than 3 million customers both online and offline in more than 2,500 cities worldwide. Earlier this year, Indian retail company Reliance Retail acquired a majority stake of 89 percent in the direct-to-consumer brand for $125 million.

“When we started this business, we as founders faced a lot of nay-sayers,” Vermani says. “The unit economics and scale eventually spoke for itself to make Clovia the biggest startup success in the category.”

On September 21, 2022 Vermani will detail Clovia’s journey from underdog to industry leader at a Founders Network global keynote. As part of the event he’ll share how to build a brand that stands the test of time along with lessons learned from Clovia’s success.

The global keynote will also cover:

• Do's and don'ts of building businesses in domains with high failure rate
• How data-driven technology can disrupt "traditionally offline" brand businesses
• The importance of alternate meditative practices and hobbies in building your startup

Opening Remarks & Chapter Launch @ 9:30am PT

Join us for opening remarks with Kevin Holmes, Founder & CEO @ Founders Network, to get the latest updates from the Network and opportunities for getting involved.

Keynote Speaker @ 9:40am PT

Pankaj Vermani is a serial entrepreneur and has co-founded and grown two companies in the past, which went through successful acquisitions and got featured in multiple global forums including Red Herring Asia 100 and Deloitte India Fast 50.

In his previous role, he was heading the Incubator / Company-Builder Mountain Apollo India, an initiative of Mountain Partners AG Zurich.

Pankaj's latest venture is Clovia, a premier D2C fashion, lingerie and personal care brand in India. The brand sells a unit every 3 seconds through its online and offline channels. Over the years the brand has won several awards including Super Start-up Asia 2018, and India Retail Awards 2019. Pankaj was awarded the Young Entrepreneur Award by Business World. Pankaj actively advises and mentors start-ups in the internet, mobile, e-com, consumer and ed-tech space. He writes regularly for technology blogs on team building, scale, and business strategy. In his free time, he is a theater buff and performs in the Professional Theatre Circle.

Pankaj is a graduate from IIT Delhi, a premier Engineering Institution In India.

Stage-Based Roundtables @ 10:30 am PT

Community Partners:

Blake Caldwell

Dec’13 Cohort Blake Caldwell is the CEO & Founder of FoundersBoost. He has 350 alumni, 100 new startups a year, 8k newsletter readers. He's driven by his passions to create and build community. He's also the founder of 2332 Collective (music production & festivals with the goal of bringing music to West LA) & The MoGuard (consumer product cup attachment protecting glorious mustaches).

FoundersBoost is a free pre-seed & seed stage mentorship driven pre-accelerator helping promising tech-startups with accelerators, investment, and revenue.

Max Shapiro

Max Shapiro founded PeopleConnect in 2000 to help early-stage high-tech companies find the talent they need to succeed. PeopleConnect’s clients are in technology, biotech, cleantech, apps, services, medical devices, and consumer products.

Their team of outstanding recruiters finds C-level executives, talented managers and experienced leaders who will bring their client companies to the next level. They provide traditional contingency searches as well as their one-of-a-kind 'Employees Without Paychecks' program, which he created after the dotcom bust to help promising companies find top-level talent willing to work for equity only until the company gets their funding.

As you can tell by the name of his company, Max likes to connect people and would love to know if there is any way that he and his team can help you add some fantastic, startup experienced people to your team, like PeopleConnect has been doing for 20 years.

Jeff Erickson

Jeff leads the Partnerships Team at Forecastr — a leading FP&A software company that helps startups create kick-butt financial models to impress investors, confidently raise capital, and effectively run their businesses better.

Jeff serves on the advisory boards of several startup companies and is an active angel investor. He's passionate about startups and enjoys working with founders and mentoring entrepreneurs.

Jeff is an experienced entrepreneur and was the founder and CEO of a successful consumer goods company that he rapidly grew from $1M in sales its first year to over $40M in annual revenue in its fourth year of operations and was ranked #138 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies.

Prior to founding his own company, Jeff was a partner at Beanstalk Partners where he led the sales and business development activities. He also served as the National Sales Director for a venture-backed tech startup where he generated over $45M in client contracts and developed the company’s channel partner program.

Jeff has a degree in accounting and graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Utah. After receiving his MBA in Finance from the University of Utah he served as the Vice President of Investments for Sentry Financial Corporation.

Cathy Keeler

Cathy is the Managing Partner at FullScope Growth, a global consortium of elite Fractional Executives and Business Acceleration Partners that provide the exact combination of experts that organizations require.

She has cross-functional experience in sales, management, marketing and business planning, client services, network development and operations. Delivers strong results within highly competitive markets.

Guests Are Welcome!

Please bring a guest! Every member can bring one (1) guest to each event. Each guest must be a full-time tech startup founder so they can bring new perspectives, skillsets, and experience to your chapter.

All guests must be full-time tech startup founders and you can register them directly on this function page. See How to Register a Guest here.

Confidentiality Reminder

All information shared within Founders Network is strictly confidential. We are built on a foundation of trust, and the community takes confidentiality seriously. Investors, members, and staff all share experiences and opinions off the record. In this roundtable forum, we continue to model our fnValues of Reciprocity, Humility, Authenticity and Inclusivity.