Q&A: Zulily's Tech Guru Gaurav Tandon on How to Use IT to Tackle Customers' Demands

In a world where many retailers struggle to keep up with tech-driven customer demands, such as mobile sales and personalization, online retailer zulily has made it part of its DNA. Gaurav Tandon, zulily's director of data science and machine learning, notes that embracing tech at its core allows the retailer, which saw net sales of 1.6 billion in 2017, to be "different than commoditized search and transactional ecommerce." Zulily seeks to create an entertaining and engaging "browse and discover" shopping experience online through both its website and app, and although the customer sees a seamless experience, it takes a lot of technical complexity, says Tandon. In fact, the company launches 9,000 products through more than 100 sales events a day. Because the company launches a new assortment of products daily across a variety of product categories, every day is different and, according to Tandon, requires flexibility in all parts of the business.