COVID-19 may have served as the bedrock for a host of new start-up ideas. But for co-founders of conscious-beauty start-up Aardae, Darshana Balagopal and Shweta Gupta, it took the pandemic and a five-day skincare expo at a popular Chennai mall to chance upon their Eureka moment.

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The duo's bootstrapped start-up, Aardae, calls itself a curator of "conscious beauty" brands in the skincare and makeup space. Today, it is hoping to scale a new peak for Indian start-ups in this space — give smaller conscious-beauty brands from India, an international platform.

Darshana (left) and Shweta's start-up, Aardae, is giving Indian beauty brands an international marketplace.

"We chanced upon the idea last year when we knew that many international beauty brands wouldn’t be able to send their stock into India thanks to various lockdowns," says Darshana, "That’s when many of us began giving Indian brands a shot only to realise that these home-grown skincare and beauty brands were cruelty-free and did well in output and efficacy."

'K-Beauty craze led to our idea'

As if this realisation wasn’t enough, what validated Darshana and Shweta’s newfound faith was a five-day Korean beauty festival in Phoenix Marketcity Chennai, where Darshana headed marketing. "We were bringing in 15 brands for this festival," she recalls, "They were to display their wares across five days, but ended up being sold out in two hours."

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The idea was staring them right in the face: could this success be replicated for Indian clean-beauty brands, overseas?

The answer to that question, the duo believed lay in the makeup and beauty stores of Singapore, where Aardae hopes to find a marketplace for Indian and overseas conscious-beauty brands. "But we don’t like calling ourselves a marketplace," Darshana insists, "We’re curators of clean and conscious beauty."

At the outset, Aardae will set up flagship stores in three cities: Singapore, Dubai and London. The start-up will also sell products of 25 Indian and 35 overseas clean-beauty brands on its e-commerce portal, starting with an inventory count of 10,000.

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Aardae picked Singapore since the market gives makeup and beauty companies their sternest test, yet. "Data shows that Singapore’s averages basket size in the cosmetics vertical is $90, which only means in this segment, your product quality has to be efficient because your audience knows what they’re buying."

Solid market for clean beauty

One of the motivating factors for the duo to take business overseas is simply the fact that the market for clean and conscious beauty has turned into a movement today. "Major international brands have already made a splash in this space," says Darshana, "In the United States and Canada alone, there are two to three platforms that exist for clean beauty, alone. In Singapore, Sephora has 'clean beauty' sections in all its stores."

Products from Aardae.

After all, the market demands it. Several makeup companies, in the recent past, have found a newfound focus on “clean beauty” and wellness. "In the last two years, smaller beauty brands have seen a 150 percent jump in sales," says Darshana.

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The only problem though: smaller companies don’t have the distribution muscle to capitalise on this newfound demand. An example: skincare brand Aminu whose focus on clean beauty resonated with Aardae’s vision.

"Just the thought of having our logistics, paperwork and other boring aspects of product expansion taken care of meant that we could put our head down and focus on product development instead of planning expansion," says Aman Mohunta, co-founder of Aminu Wellness, one of the brands that Aardae will take to Singapore.

Aminu is projecting a three-fold quarter-on-quarter growth for Indian brands in Singapore. Ever since the company launched in March, it registered first-quarter revenue of Rs 10 lakh, before that number saw a spike to Rs 25 lakh in the July-September quarter.

'Want to stay bootstrapped for now'

Like Aminu, 25 Indian clean-beauty brands — including the likes of Juicy Chemistry, Ruby's Organics, Soul Tree, Aminu and Brillare. — and 35 others from overseas will ride on Aardae’s Singapore sojourn, before expanding to Malaysia, Indonesia, the Middle-East, Europe and Australia.

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In a move that Darshana and Shweta feel could go a long way in making a statement of Aardae’s intent to do serious business, the Chennai-based firm will go on to register as a Singapore company. Its ambitions notwithstanding, Aardae plans to stay bootstrapped for the foreseeable future.

"We have venture capitalists who have been approaching us, but the fact is we are good to go for the next six months," says Darshana, "We are more keen to see how this game plays out before we let them ecosystem know that we are open to funding."

(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)

First Published:Sept 14, 2021 4:30 PM IST