LyncMeUp is Darshana’s brain child and I was keen to understand the road which had led to her taking on one of the fastest growing and largest dotcom businesses of recent years.
Darshana has spent years supporting businesses and entrepreneurs internationally. Recently, in her role as a General Manager of a global events company, Darshana grew the business in several countries through various online marketing strategies and promotional activity online. Prior to this, Darshana had significant experience in Media Sales and managed advertising and promotion projects for more than 30 key clients. It was whilst doing this that Darshana noticed that a lot of small businesses struggled to get a Return On Investment from traditional marketing channels.  When she first heard about the Daily Deal model, she realised that this could be a key part of the marketing mix for small businesses and became very excited about how she might be able to move this forward.

Darshana has teamed up with co-owner Marcus Ubl, a serial entrepreneur who has founded businesses such as Triumphant Events and Entrevo.  In the last 6 months, LyncMeUp has been well received in 42 cities. The team have a growing, loyal customer database with more than 20% of consumers purchasing more than once.

Like all businesses, the team have faced a number of challenges and have found it difficult to maintain a high quality of customer service and team training in such a fast paced and highly pressurised environment.  Darshana has found, however, that being one of few women in the daily deal industry has worked in her favour. She has gained a lot of support from others and feels she builds a better relationship with her consumers, given that over 70% of daily deal customers are female.

Cherie Blair spotted Darshana’s potential at the recent Women’s Empowerment Day but Darshana’s ambitions for the future are both grounded and focused. She hopes to experience continued growth and more market awareness of LyncMeUp, she is searching for fun and exciting new deals and is committed to delivering great value to both consumers and clients without paying a premium.

To other entrepreneurs Darshana says, ‘Having a business plan is good but you must constantly test and measure all business activities to be ahead of the game. There is a lot of research to be done on an industry before you start a business and it is important that you don’t underestimate that’. She also recommends the principles of talent dynamics saying, ‘There is no ‘I’ in success. Entrepreneurs need a team who has a good track record with complimentary skillset to be part of the vision’. The team at LyncMeUp have used these principles to build their innovative team whom I believe will give the key players in the Daily Deals Industry a good run for their money.