While Indian cosmetic brands like Nykaa and Purplle are leading the industry, a homegrown brand called Sugar Cosmetics is giving a tough fight to the two companies, run by entrepreneur duo and married couple Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee.
Vineeta Singh is the CEO of the successful Sugar Cosmetics while her husband Kaushik Mukherjee is the COO of the company. The husband-wife duo met each other while studying in the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, and has been inseparable since.
After meeting in IIM Ahmedabad, Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee both interned as investment bankers and then started their own separate companies. Later, Vineeta got a job offer with a whopping Rs 1 crore as salary, but ended up rejecting it to start her own company.
Vineeta Singh decided to start her cosmetic company Sugar with a small investment, with her husband Kaushik Mukherjee being the unseen force behind her startup. Mukherjee first had a small startup selling women’s bags, and decided to join forces for Sugar Cosmetics with her wife in 2012.
In the first year of its launch, Sugar Cosmetics reported a profit of Rs 52 lakh, and the company eventually started to grow. The Indian cosmetic firm soon caught the eye of Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh, who ended up investing in the company.
Taking the valuation of Sugar Cosmetics to a new height, Ranveer Singh’s investment came out to around USD 50 million, which is over Rs 414 crore. this took the valuation of Sugar Cosmetics to USD 500 million, which is Rs 4,100 crore in Indian currency.
The husband-wife duo established and grew Sugar Cosmetics to give tough competition to Falguni Nayar’s Nykaa and other massive companies such as Reliance’s Tira Beauty and Ratan Tata’s firm Tata Cliq, being a major player in the cosmetics space.
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