Startup Spectator

Fundfina was started in 2017 and is trying to democratize finance fir small businesses. It provides on-demand credit TO MSMEs.

We live in a world where celebrity brands have taken over. Global and Indian celebrities are using their stardom to get into business. Be it clothing or makeup, you can find all sorts of celebrity brands these days. But in this Kylie lipstick and Kay beauty Era, we still have a few brands that were created by people like you and me. And one such brand is SUGAR COSMETICS. Started by Vineeta and Kaushik in 2012 faced many hurdles as they launched the digital-first beauty market.  “When we tried raising capital, we were told that digital-first beauty will be a small market and that it would be impossible to compete with large FMCG companies without raising hundreds of millions of dollars. We were even told that the product itself won’t be a strong moat since it is a commodity,” they shared in an interview. 

From building a brand from scratch to becoming a shark, it wasn't a cakewalk for the IIM Ahemndabad alumini, who rejected a handsome salary to start her own venture.
She once said “I always felt strongly about building 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, in 2012. The 200,000 women who shared their detailed beauty preferences with us were at the heart of our pivot to SUGAR Cosmetics, which launched as a direct-to-consumer makeup brand in 2015.”

HOW TO GROW DIGITALLY

The world around us is changing, from the introduction of e-commerce sites to social media platforms, the route to the customer has evolved drastically. We are moving towards the meta verse and if you haven’t digitized your business already then waste no time and read this article.
There are plenty of ways of learning digital skills, from enrolling yourself to a fancy university to buying expensive and time consuming courses. But in this write-up we will only share the easiest of the easiest ways to grow digitally.

1. Google Digital Garage - It was created by Google in 2015 as a nonprofit program. It allows you to acquire digital skills required to accelerate your career or business. There are a range of free online courses available from marketing to coding and beyond.

2. LearnVern - It is a training portal where anyone can learn any course in vernacular languages for free. Courses like Digital Marketing, MS Excel etc. If you are someone who struggles with English, then this is the apt course for you, because LearnVern’s Digital Marketing Course is in Hindi and quite suitable for 12th pass students, undergraduates, and marketing professionals.