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What is your educational and professional background? After getting an IIT JEE Rank of 378 and graduating from IIT Madras, I pursued my MBA from India’s top B-School, IIM Ahmedabad. That said, it takes perseverance, the zeal to keep going, and my 4H mantra – Hunger, Hustle, Humility, and Humour that keeps me on my toes, always.
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What prompted the idea for SUGAR Cosmetics? In 2012, my team and I had been running a Direct-To-Consumer beauty subscription venture that served a young 18-30 year old demographic when we noticed a shift that was underway. Our close proximity to this TG, a closed-loop feedback-gathering system and the ability to send 200 products each year to 100,000 women gave us a very unique vantage point in the industry. As a result, SUGAR Cosmetics was born to address a white space in the industry that was being overlooked.
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Did you always know you wanted to work in this space? I was pretty positive since the beginning of my career to build something with women as the core customer. So when my first startup didn’t scale, I decided to launch a beauty subscription company with my co-founder, Kaushik Mukherjee, in 2012.
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What was your first milestone and how did you get there? One of our first milestones was when SUGAR launched matte, long-lasting makeup with shades for Indian women, and received more than 2 lakh online reviews with 4 to 5-star ratings. At the time, we were a new brand and to have a product go viral digitally through women talking about it on Instagram was heartwarming. To this day, the lipstick range is our best seller!
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What are your tips for an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to enter the competitive space of beauty? The market is cluttered and the competition is fierce, so the only way to stand out is to create a unique solution to a problem that is faced by your core TG.Additionally, it’s imperative to be consistent. The only way to build a consumer’s trust is to be consistent over the years with respect to packaging, product, quality and design.Another point to always keep in mind is that consumers are very price sensitive, so it’s vital to get the pricing right.
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