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Varsha Rao to share her success story with TiE

J M Shenoy

It should not surprise anyone that Varsha Rao, the twenty-something McKinsey dropout, is always in demand to address business groups across America. Eve.com, the 24-hour, interactive online beauty shopping cofounded by her is one of the biggest dotcom success stories in recent years.

Since its launch in June last year, it has been featured in such major publications as Forbes and Red Herring.

Rao will address The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) in Santa Clara on 'The Beauty of the Internet, The Story of eve.com' on March 21.

Eve.com is the first online Internet destination created exclusively to deliver a wide array of upmarket beauty products. The online market for cosmetics, fragrance, skin-care and personal-care products is expected to hit $1.2 billion by 2003 and Rao says she wants to make sure that eve.com will be a leader in the field.

San Francisco-based eve.com is backed, in part, by Bill Gross, the Southern California venture capitalist who has helped the birth of some of the Web's leading ecommerce companies, including eToys and the Wedding Channel.

Rao and her partner are often asked how the makers of upscale cosmetics have lined with eve.com and foregone their exclusiveness.

They were able to break through because they say they convinced the companies that there was value to offering their products online to a high-end audience.

Rao says eve.com's store layout gives each company its own online 'boutique' similar to the department store counters.

Prior to co-founding eve.com, Rao was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co, where she worked with a variety of media, consumer products and direct marketing clients. Her work ranged from strategy development to improving cost effectiveness. She was also a leader in McKinsey's Digital Marketing Practice. She co-authored the article: Internet Advertising: New Medium or New Marketing Paradigm.

Rao, who graduated with distinction from Harvard Business School, had received a BS in economics and a BA in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.

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