In this article, we will be covering the success story of Vineeta Singh- a woman who didn’t get swayed by the 1 crore job offer and worked relentlessly to establish her own brand.
We, humans, tend to hurl our adulation towards those who have achieved something. Now, the idea of achievement in itself is a subjective one as its appreciable characteristics are different for different people. However, the more general consensus pertains to success or achievement in one’s career. So far, there are a lot of personalities that fit into this space of extolling. However, when we take into account the spectrum of entrepreneurship and then women entrepreneurs we will eventually stumble upon a dearth of such personalities.
One such individual that we are going to elicit in this article is none other than Vineeta Singh, the co-founder of Sugar Cosmetics, which I know must be familiar to you allowing her recent presence in the famous Indian show Shark Tank India. Her success story doesn’t culminate in being part of the show, rather it is a consequence of that success that she made it there, what was it and how did it all unfold for her? Let’s see in this article.
Early Life and Education | Vineeta Singh CEO
Vineeta Singh completed her schooling at DPS RK Puram. She had always been a bright student which then got reflected in her selection into IIT Madras in 2005 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. She then got admitted to another eminent institution, that is, IIM Ahmedabad from where she completed her MBA degree in 2007. Towards the end of her degree, she was offered a 1 crore job l. However, Vineeta had a much bigger vision than labouring under commands and that was establishing her own start-up.
How did SUGAR cosmetics happen
In an interview, Vineeta mentioned how she had an inclination towards a brand that was essentially women-centric. She then goes on to mention that when her first start-up failed she decided to launch a beauty subscription company with her co-founder named Kaushik back in 2012. The startup saw success in the form of about 200000 women subscribing to the platform and also shared their beauty preferences in a very much detailed way. All of this eventually culminated in a D2C makeup /beauty brand named SUGAR Cosmetics in 2015.
Vineeta’s rationale behind creating SUGAR was simple. She wanted to eradicate the reliance of Indian women to find the right shade for their skin on foreign brands. Now, with SUGAR, an Indian brand, she endeavoured to create products that will be made keeping in mind the nuances of the Indian skin.
One of the most important facets in which SUGAR turned out to be splendid was its marketing game. They basically targeted females between the age group 20 and 35 years and the best way through which that can be done was influencer marketing that mostly included popular social media platforms such as YouTube & Facebook.
The Hardships
Until now we have seen hardly any roadblocks towards her and Co-founder Kaushik’s journey. Does that mean that there weren’t any, well there of course were that are worth mentioning in this segment.
Firstly, the impediment came in the form of reluctance to fund their startup. According to the investors, digital-first beauty is a tiny market and has a hegemony of the larger FMCG players that are too gigantic and entrenched to be competed with and if they don’t want to compete with them they would have to raise about hundreds and millions of dollars which at this stage no one would be willing to invest.
But as they say, destiny is a funny thing. Now, the brand is so established that they are now raising funds in millions and are able to sell more than 600000 products each month, while their app has about 1 million downloads and the Instagram page amassing millions of followers.
Coming to their offline presence, the brand has marked its presence in more than 130 cities as well. Their recent partnership with Warner Bros on the occasion of Women’ day is suggestive of their increasing global network.
What do we learn from Vineeta Singh’s success story?
Vineeta Singh along with her husband and co-founder Kaushik brings to the table a very important yet basic lesson and that is to never relinquish or abandon your dreams if they have the potential to turn into wonders someday. Whether, or not they have the potential can only be judged by you, so success, we opine in the end, is a subjective project. However, what is common in each instance is this relentless drive which becomes clear from Vineeta’s example.
