Co-founder and CMO Vatsal Agrawal on building a general trade powerhouse, mastering price-quality balance, and chasing a breakout category winner
What gap in the market led to the inception of the brand? How did that shape your early positioning?
It was quite an interesting journey. When we entered the cosmetics space, we realised that over 50 per cent of the market was still unregulated, with products that were often unsafe and lacked transparency in ingredients and manufacturing.
The biggest gap was the absence of safe yet affordable cosmetics. While regulated products existed, they were largely inaccessible to the mass market due to pricing. That’s where we positioned ourselves—offering safe, reliable and pocket-friendly products.
To make this viable, we began with wholesale and multi-pack formats, which reduced per-unit costs and allowed consumers to experiment without hesitation. This approach helped us understand consumer behaviour and build the brand from the ground up.
That’s an unconventional route—starting with wholesale instead of smaller SKUs. What have been the key milestones in your journey so far?
Two milestones stand out. 2018 – Building a Sales Network. We transitioned from wholesale to a structured distribution system with distributors, retailers and a dedicated sales team. Starting in Delhi, we expanded across North India and today have a sales force of over 100 people.
2023 – Entering the Online Space. After establishing strong offline acceptance, we moved online. Insights gathered between 2018 and 2020 helped us identify high-performing products and regions, enabling a more strategic digital expansion.
How has the brand performed across offline, marketplaces and D2C channels?
We’ve always been a general trade-heavy brand. Even today 90 per cent of our business comes from offline channels, 10 per cent comes from online. Within online, 95 per cent is driven by marketplaces D2C contributes a very small share, largely due to our low average selling price of Rs 210–220, which makes the economics challenging.
That said, we are actively investing in online growth and aim to achieve a 50:50 split between offline and online over the next few years.
What are your expansion priorities over the next 12–24 months?
Our focus is both geographical and digital expansion, expanding retail reach from 12,000 to 20,000 outlets, deepening penetration in tier 3 and tier 4 markets and Strengthening presence across online marketplaces.
Category-wise, while we remain make-up focused, we are cautiously exploring skincare and haircare, ensuring we only launch products that genuinely address market gaps.
What is one major goal for 2026?
We aim to create a category-leading product—something that becomes synonymous with its category across marketplaces. That’s a key milestone we’re working towards.
There’s often a perception that affordable products compromise on quality. How do you maintain both?
It comes down to the basics—the core of formulation and packaging. We focus on using only what is functionally necessary and safe and avoiding unnecessary costs in over-packaging or excessive ingredients. This allows us to deliver reliable, high-quality products at accessible prices without compromise.
Consumers today are increasingly open to Indian brands. Are you seeing that shift?
Absolutely. Consumers are more experimental and aware. They recognise that Indian brands often offer products better suited to local skin tones and needs.
Trust has grown significantly, and people are far more willing to try and adopt homegrown brands.
