SUGAR Cosmetics CEO Vineeta Singh did not plan to launch a make-up brand. The beauty products market was already crowded with big players and coming from an engineering background, she had no experience with make-up or chemistry.
Vineeta Singh, one of the judges on hit startup reality show Shark Tank India, recently took to LinkedIn to answer the question she is asked frequently: How she thought of starting a make-up company.
“Well, the answer is that I did not think of launching a makeup brand,” Singh said in response. “I definitely wasn't born with the courage to take on "giants"! I obviously wasn't planning to enter any over-competitive markets.”
Singh added that she and her husband Kaushik Mukherjee “started something else” and it failed. “It was our customers who literally took us down this road,” she said.
The SUGAR Cosmetics CEO has previously revealed she planned to begin her startup career 15 years ago with a lingerie business, but it never saw the light of the day.
Eventually, she launched SUGAR Cosmetics with her husband in 2012. “SUGAR Cosmetics didn't come to life as a makeup products company but as a belief that education on social media will drive the brands of the future and 7 years later that's still the same,” she added
Singh gave a shout-out to her team for being her “greatest superpower”.
“They embody the aspirations of our consumers so closely that their instinct is often more accurate in predicting trends than any data we looked at,” Singh added. “And, so we had the courage that when it came to "getting" millennial women and winning their hearts on social media, ours was the team that had the right to win!”
Singh also shared some advice with up-and-coming entrepreneurs. “If you're unsure about what to build, start something in a space that excites you and then learn from the customer,” she said.
Customer is always the queen, she added. "You really learn about her only when you try selling something to her and then you fail and then you try something else and so on till you have something that you just can't keep in stock!”
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