L K Gupta joins GirnarSoft Labs as CMO

Within a year of joining bus ticketing company redBus, Gupta moves on to GirnarSoft Labs.

Lakshmikant Gupta, chief marketing officer of Bengaluru-based bus ticketing company redBus.in, has quit the company and joined GirnarSoft Labs as CMO. GirnarSoft owns consumer portals Cardekho.com, Bikedekho.com, Pricedekho.com and also provides B2B services like website designing, website development, e-commerce site building, mobile app development and internet marketing. Gupta will be in charge of marketing for both the company's B2B and B2C operations.

Gupta joins Girnar within a year of joining redBus as CMO. "There were certain reasons which led me to look for a change. However, I have learnt a lot at redBus, having been involved in launching the marketing activities of the company," he states. Gupta had joined redBus in March 2013 after a five-year stint at LG Electronics India.

An MBA from IMT Ghaziabad, Gupta began his career with IMRB in 1996 and worked as associate project director for five years. Later, he shifted to Gillette and worked there for nearly a decade. He joined LG Electronics India (the Indian arm of the Korean giant) as vice-president and chief marketing officer in 2007.

Speaking on his new role, Gupta says, "I have spent more than 20 years in conventional marketing and over the time have realised that digital and e-commerce have changed the way Indian consumers are buying products and are interacting with brands. Hence, as a marketer, I need to be in this new age medium to understand consumers better. E-commerce is going to change the way businesses are done in a big way."

Founded in 2007 by brothers Amit and Anurag Jain, both IIT-Delhi alumni, GirnarSoft labs began its journey as an outsourced product development company. In order to leverage their technology expertise and understanding of the Indian internet landscape, the brothers launched the flagship portal Cardekho.com in 2008. In terms of page views, it gets over 37 million per month from over 3.5 million unique visitors and over 6 million total visitors every month. It has over 25,000 used cars listed across several Indian cities and towns.

In November 2013, the company had raised USD 15 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. The funds were to be used to fuel Cardekho.com's expansion plans. The company plans to launch an array of dealer-focussed tools and services based on the mobile platform.