MPW 2022: 'Good businesses thrive irrespective of market situation,' says SUGAR Cosmetics CEO Vineeta Singh

Good businesses thrive irrespective of the market situation, said Vineeta Singh, CEO and co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics. She was speaking at Business Today's 19th edition of 'The Most Powerful Women in Business' event in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Seeing beauty industry as one of the fastest growing industries in the world, Singh said that this is one of those areas that are messed up even in the Western countries, like US, in terms of capital going in women's share. “In the US, around 2.3% of the capital goes to women-led companies. In India, it is probably 1%. So, we're actually all just messed up as far as capital that's going to women-run businesses is concerned,” she said.

“There is a lot of conversation around it, which I'm grateful for, because it first starts with conversations. 10 years back, it was obnoxious. But I think putting their money where their mouth is what will bring this number up to about at least 20%-25%, which is the number of women-led businesses. In the Indian ecosystem, 20-25% of the businesses in India, if you include the small entrepreneurs, are run by women. But funding is only going to less than 2% of them. When that changes and these two become similar, then we know that there's real change that's happening,” she said.

Singh, who is also one of the 'sharks' in the Sony TV show Shark Tank India, said that, interestingly, in the show 48% of the pitches that came out are from women with a lot of amazing entrepreneurs in India. Singh credited the success of many businesses to the show. She said that in this season, there are businesses that have seen overnight 100 times jump in their daily sales rate.

“Two years back when Sony started this, all of us thought that there was no way in India that anybody would sit at 9 PM or 10 PM in front of the television and watch people negotiating money. It sounded like the most absurd idea, but they (Sony TV) pulled it off,” said Singh.

Singh believed that earlier brands were all about trust and consistency, but in the last five to six years with Gen Z, as the core consumer, brands are also about community, purpose, the story behind them. She said that young consumers want to connect with the brand at a deeper level than just a product led transaction.

Recently, Singh was seen on the Shark Tank India show pitching her own brand SUGAR and telling her story. “I feel that the fact that I was able to put my story out there, including the failures that I've gone through, I think there were two things. One is that it helped the brand see more relatable, because at the end of the day, our consumers are young, ambitious women. I felt that I was able to mirror the same ambition, resilience that the young Indian woman consumer has,” said Singh.

“And the other thing is that our whole entire entrepreneurial journey, there have been so many failures. And you somehow figured out that it's a marathon, not a sprint and you figured out a way to put one step after the other and keep going,” she said.

Singh said that the last two years have been really hard for startups everywhere adding that she feels connected with young women entrepreneurs. “There's so much that I've learned about, Gen Z women consumers, the kind of businesses that are being made in smaller cities, led by women of all age groups starting from 18 to 80,” she said. “I took away so much in terms of just understanding what's happening and harder and many times we get stuck in our echo chambers sitting in metros and trying to create products for our partners,” she added.

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