Deals app Little appoints Amisha Sethi as CMO

Bangalore-based Little Internet Pvt Ltd, which owns the deals discovery app Little and counts Zovi.com's founders Manish Chopra and Satish Mani as promoters, has appointed Amisha Sethi as its chief marketing officer, according to a press release.

In her role as CMO of Little, Sethi will lead the brand building activities and will be focusing on strategies to enhance customer acquisition and also intends to build an in-house innovative team of marketers called  'Jugaad Marketers'.

"The O2O market in India offers huge potential to create and execute interesting marketing campaigns. With our new 3C's concept of Crazy, Compassionate and Creative innovators, we will be creating a

first-of-its-kind marketing team called 'Jugaad Marketers'," Sethi said in the statement.

With an experience of more than a decade in consumer and brand marketing, Sethi is an executive scholar in marketing and sales management from Kellogg School of Management.

Previously, she was CMO - global of Canada-based Zafin Vancouver. Prior to that, Sethi was with AirAsia as chief commercial officer and has also been director of brand marketing Asia Pacific at Blackberry and marketing manager at Airtel. She recently debuted as an author with her book 'It doesn't hurt to be nice'.

"Amisha comes with a rich experience of steering marketing for well admired companies like AirAsia, Blackberry and Airtel. Her experience will be integral to get more customers to experience 'Little' and recognise 'Little' as their partner to enhance their lifestyle," Manish Chopra, CEO and co-founder of Little, said.

Last month, Little had also appointed Suraj Panigrahy as VP (sales and merchant acquisition) and Wishy Arora as VP of products.

Little is a mobile marketplace for deals related to offline merchants. It covers restaurants, movies, hotels, salons, gyms, spas and others. Currently, Little offers deals from over 5,000 merchants. The company hopes to have over 50,000 live deals across 11 cities on its app by March 2016, the statement said.

It expects to hit a GMV facilitation run rate of $170 million (over Rs 1,000 crore) by the current year end.

In July, Little raised $50 million (Rs 318 crore) from One97Communications, which runs mobile commerce venture Paytm, SAIF Partners and Tiger Global Management, among others.

As part of the funding, Little will power the deals platform on Paytm.

Little's co-founder Satish Mani, a former senior vice-president (technology) at Cleartrip, started fashion e-tailer Zovi in 2010 along with Kavindra Mishra and Sartaj Mehta. Started as an online menswear private label brand, the company added women's wear and accessories later on.

It appointed Manish Chopra, who was Microsoft Indonesia's chief marketing and operations officer, as CEO in 2012. Kavindra Mishra left the firm in June 2013 while Sartaj Mehta in September 2012. ​Sumit Agarwal joined Zovi in June 2012 as CFO.