Second Life Podcast: Seema Bansal Chadha

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who’ve made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode gives you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts to stay tuned.

Every year, people all over the world send flowers to each other to celebrate Valentine’s Day—unfortunately, not all flower arrangements show up looking as beautiful as they do online.

In fact, this disappointing event is exactly what led Seema Bansal Chadha to start Venus et Fleur. A few months into dating her now-husband and co-founder Sunny, he sent her flowers on Valentine’s Day, and the flowers were nothing like either of them expected.

As Seema details in this episode, “He had done a ton of research online, and he basically used a third-party website that obviously contracts out the floral delivery to a local florist. So there’s a bunch of options on the site. The issue is obviously there’s no control. So he ordered this beautiful dome arrangement of roses, and what I got was like 12 roses that were starting to wilt. The vase didn’t look like the vase. So he was really disappointed. He’s like, ‘I’m trying to get this gesture across. Like, don’t think I’m this cheap guy. I spent so much time. I spent all this money.’ So we just realized, wow, this is such a huge problem in the floral industry. There’s zero transparency into what you will get.”

Seema Bansal Chadha with flowers

(Image credit: Venus et Fleur)

Seema grew up in an entrepreneurial family, working at her father’s lighting-and-plumbing business, first as a receptionist and later in sales, buying, and eventually marketing, but after this Valentine’s Day experience, she realized she had a business idea of her own. With the skills she gained being a “multitool” at her family’s company, she and Sunny began building Venus et Fleur with the hope of creating a reliable flower-delivery company with arrangements that looked good and stayed fresh in transit and beyond.

Seema Bansal Chadha working on Venus et Fleur

(Image credit: Venus et Fleur)

After a successful launch in 2015, Seema and Sunny expanded their offerings with an innovative product: eternity roses. These roses are harvested in Ecuador, Japan, and Europe, and given a specific preservation process to make them last a year or longer—aka, no more wilting roses for Valentine’s Day. In the years since, the company has expanded its offering and now includes a variety of flowers, including hydrangeas, and homeware, such as the Murano Glassware and Fleur Frame.

Seema Bansal Chadha with vases

(Image credit: Jatinder Channa)

Listen to the latest episode of Second Life to find out how Seema developed the eternity rose and went on to build a Kardashian-approved, luxury flower-arrangement company. And keep scrolling to shop Venus et Fleur’s best-selling products.