Heily Hindrea, the head of B2B product at ZALORA Group, has been named one of the winners of ‘Empowered Women in Platforms’. The recognition initiative, Empowered Women Awards 2023, is MARKETECH APAC’s inaugural effort in recognising outstanding female leaders in the industry.
Heily has been with her current position since April 2022. She joined Zalora in 2018 where she first served as a senior product manager before being promoted to the role of principal product manager in 2019, then to her current role. Prior to joining Zalora, she also had stints working with companies such as MindValley and Proekspert.
How to continuously improve and escalate B2B offering–the ZALORA way
As a company that specialises in enabling e-commerce offerings for businesses, Zalora must maintain its B2B offering in order to support its journey as a well-recognised e-commerce enabler in Southeast Asia. And for Heily, it all boils down to how she–as the company’s prime leader in improving its B2B product offering–will be up to the task.
In her current role, she oversees the company’s e-commerce B2B product portfolio that ranges from the merchant portal to logistics, supply chain, and warehouse operations.
She also led a team that was responsible for enhancing Zalora’s in-house logistics and
operations systems to ensure seamless real-time order processing and fulfilment.
With these in mind, Heily has managed to have Zalora effectively reduce business costs by over SG$ 100,000, while at the same time enhancing its capability to process 95% of customer orders within one working day. Under her leadership, Zalora has also looked at actively scaling its same-day delivery capabilities, and is expecting it to be a significant driver of future growth for the company. This is especially with the fact that its marketplace account for 43% of its net merchandise value (NMV), and platform services make up 9% of its revenue.
In short, her contributions to developing Zalora’s B2B platform services have strengthened the company’s capabilities to deliver innovative breakthroughs in operations and logistics, to stay true to its ethos of making fashion accessible to all.
Building a leadership ethos out of diverse experiences and inclusive mentorship
Heily’s career dates back to when she first served at Proekspert AS, and was responsible for helping to relieve emotional strains and tensions amongst team members to help them better focus on delivering product outputs. This was already on top of her existing responsibilities on helping her team develop essential software for clients.
When she was promoted to the role of team lead at said company, she also built a self-operating and balanced team within a span of seven months – ensuring the team’s success by balancing its members’ internal competencies evenly. Her promotion in the company back then was in recognition of her leadership and expertise, where she was tasked to deliver creative solutions for customers.
She then moved on at Mindvalley, where she established several initiatives demonstrating her strategic thinking and problem-solving skills to help the development teams create more thoughtful and better solutions for customers, manage priorities and optimise internal processes.
By the time she moved on to Zalora, she eventually went on to coach other Product Managers on product refinement and best practices in working with Zalora’s development teams. She attributes her success today to her sheer determination and the trust and confidence that her mentors placed in her capabilities as a leader.
Moreover, Heily is widely recognised as a coach who motivates and nurtures her team so that they realise their full potential. As a strong believer of paying it forward in the workplace, Heily consciously imparts to her team the lessons she has learned throughout her career. She empowers team members to take ownership of their responsibilities and accomplish their goals – whether personal or professional.
On breaking ceilings through insightful thought leadership and inclusive insights
Recognising her position as a female leader in her field, Heily consciously makes it a point to
speak up and speak of her experiences by representing ZALORA whenever she gets the opportunity. In doing so, she hopes to inspire more ambitious women and serve as their role model, much like how others were and are for her.
One of those recent initiatives was she recently participated in a webinar where she shared her experience and advice for navigating and thriving in the e-commerce and tech industries. Moreover, her speech also inspired the attendees on how women can break the glass ceilings they often impose on themselves by shifting to a growth mindset and building a strong network and community of support.
Aside from Hindrea, check out who else made it to Empowered Women Awards 2023 Winners’ list.
