Zalora's female leaders make diversity a priority

MANY companies today struggle to inject diversity into their organisations, often led by homogeneous groups of mostly men from similar backgrounds, but online fashion retailer Zalora is a strong exception.

Women make up 45 per cent of the e-retailer's top 50 positions and 55 per cent of its overall workforce, and the company comprises at least 30 nationalities.

At the helm are two women who represent a slice of this diversity and are deeply invested in preserving this crucial balance. Gunjan Soni, who joined the company as chief executive officer in January 2019, hails from India, while Silvia Thom is a German native who has been with Zalora for eight years and was appointed chief technology officer in March 2019.

Their vision of a company culture that promotes diversity and transparency is driven by a desire to ensure that the company is representative of its customer base (which is 75 per cent female) and has the right talent to combine new ideas and local knowledge for success in the complex South-east Asia region.

"Diverse talent in my view is a necessity and not a choice, for any leader in today's world or any leader who wants to be successful," said Ms Soni.

She cited research by McKinsey & Company that found companies in the top quartile for gender diversity in their executive teams to be 25 per cent more likely to deliver above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

To Ms Thom, who climbed the ranks from senior product manager to CTO through nearly the entirety of Zalora's nine-year history, the three most important aspects of the company's culture are the wealth of ideas stemming from its diverse employee base, the platform provided for people to speak up, and the willingness of the organisation to try out new ideas and opportunities.

In her experience, this makes employees feel empowered, improves retention and nurtures talent that can take on important roles.

Ms Thom said her best advice to fellow executives striving to emulate Zalora by achieving a more even gender split is to "really push for women in leadership positions".

This compels more careful defining of what qualities are needed for the position, and searching for the right candidates rather than seeing only the convenient ones.

Ms Thom believes more work and thought should be put into observing interactions and identifying individuals who can not only lead teams but also create greater diversity in the rest of the organisation.

"That would lead to some qualities being emphasised more, where women also have an edge and something different to bring to the table," she said.

At the same time, Ms Soni made it clear that promoting diversity of all kinds, including gender, is not something that only female leaders can do, as "men are equally capable of having values which are supportive of diversity".

Ms Thom concurred: "There are a lot of conversations about how women should support each other, which I definitely agree with, but one of the most inspiring things to me has been the men I met who supported me. They may have a wife, sister or daughter, and they have that belief that 'I also want her to thrive in such an environment, so I will make some changes as a male leader'."

Under Ms Soni's and Ms Thom's leadership, Zalora emerged from a difficult 2020 with 21.2 per cent revenue growth and 32.3 per cent gross profit improvement.

Part of the positive performance was credited to a category expansion that Ms Soni had prioritised in her strategy for the company, and which Ms Thom's tech team enabled. The kids, beauty, luxury and home and living products added in Q4 2019 and Q1 2020 saw triple-digit growth during the pandemic while apparel and footwear sales dived.

"Many companies take years to launch one category right. We launched (all four) in the span of two quarters," Ms Soni said.

"I think that really takes something from an organisation to deliver that, including from the tech team who had a really hard time enabling all this. But doing that helped us not just survive, but thrive during this Covid period."

Ms Soni has also been focusing on cost effectiveness and operational discipline over the past two years. As a result, Zalora achieved full-quarter profitability for the first time in Q4 2020 and reduced Ebitda losses by more than 70 per cent for the whole year.

While gender equality has made significant strides over the last few decades and female leaders are no longer a rarity, the two still receive surprised reactions from those not expecting women in their roles.

"More often than not, people are surprised. They don't say it but it shows on their face, then it's business as usual. It's not any positive or negative bias," Ms Soni said.

She recalls her first client when she was a consultant with McKinsey & Company, who compared her to his own daughter of a similar age and questioned her ability to advise his company because of her youth.

Instead of letting that undermine her confidence, she suggested focusing on the work first, and discussing in three months whether or not their partnership had been effective. She eventually won over the client, who became one of the strongest supporters of the change she and her team advised.

"Because you start from a slightly weaker position, when you actually show a big transformation, you get remembered and noticed a lot more," Ms Soni said.

"That's a positive factor that women should consider and should leverage, especially when they do good work, to showcase it and let people who have seen that work mentor them and help them along the way."

Similarly, Ms Thom has found that initial prejudices usually disappear once she starts working and proving herself. Her focus in her role as CTO has been on expressing herself authentically, regardless of how others might lead.

"One of my biggest values is leading with authenticity. Always try to stay very core to that and not follow some of these prejudices, like this is what's expected from the CTO or this is what other male CTOs are doing," she said.

"Just following what I think is best for the team and company has served me very well."

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