Tag: entrepreneur

The Success Story of Sugar Cosmetics

When Vineeta Singh and her partner, Kaushik Mukherjee started fab Bag in 2012, it was their second entrepreneurial venture. It was a monthly makeup and beauty subscription for women in which a subscriber would receive a bag of 4 to 5 beauty products every month. These products would be selected from various brands based on the customer’s preferences and skin type. It was in 2015 that they made another attempt and began Sugar Cosmetics. With Fab Bag, Vineeta realized that a lot of the foreign and local makeup brands were not suited for Indian skin tones. This is how they set up Sugar cosmetics with the aim of providing affordable and compatible products catered to Indian complexion. This meant a lot of their products could be used by consumers even if they had to use public transport for long distances to go to work. In 2022, it has established its place in India’s beauty industry, competing with famous brands like L’Oreal and Lakme.

Vineeta Singh, CEO and Co-founder of Sugar Cosmetics

For the initial two years, Sugar stayed as an online-only brand, after which, it started to move into offline retail. Today, this Mumbai-based D2C (Direct to Customer) brand has over 2500 outlets in over 120 cities across India. In five years, it has managed to cross Rs.100 crore revenue, with the company witnessing its biggest leap in success right after the COVID-19 lockdown.

According to Abhay Pandey, general partner at A91 Partners and one of the backers of the cosmetic company, what really helped this brand was its perfectly timed beginning when India was witnessing two major trends- a rapidly growing beauty business and increasing internet usage by consumers. By launching as a digital-only start-up, they were able to gain a set of loyal consumers. These consumers, mostly millennials, felt empowered by the consumer-oriented products of the company. The founders began Sugar based on three core ideas – listening to consumers, staying away from discounting and focusing on content for consumers. This is the strategy they have always stuck to and it has proved very useful for them. The company sells basic makeup products like foundation cream, concealer, eyeliner, lip-liners, mascara, lipsticks, as well as skin-care products and makeup kits. Lipsticks and Lip crayons contribute to 65% of their revenue, with best-selling brands like ‘Matte as Hell’, ‘Nothing Else Matters’, and ‘Seal the Show’.

The COVID-19 situation saw the company depend strongly on social media marketing to survive and strengthen its relationship with consumers. Sugar had always managed an omnichannel presence even before the lockdown. They collaborated with a lot of YouTube and Instagram influencers when they started to attract millennials and urban Indian women to their products. When COVID-19 hit, it was not the easiest time, with many companies being forced to shut down their operations. Sugar also saw a complete halt in sales during the lockdown in the months of April and May. Warehouses and retail outlets were shut down. However, they started to get an increasing amount of sales from June onwards as the retail team at Sugar figured out how to make the entire sales online. They made full use of their app which was launched in 2020, and their social media presence to continue with customer engagement. Their app has been downloaded 100,000 times and they boast a huge online presence, with 2 million followers on Instagram. According to Vineeta Singh, content was and is one of their main focus points. They aim to build a brand with great influencer and social media marketing.

While their products are manufactured across USA, Germany, India and South Korea, and they have distributors in America, Sugar Cosmetics remains focused on the Indian market.          

Entrepreneur

The word entrepreneur has its origin in the French language. It refers to the organiser of musical or other entertainments. An entrepreneur is one who organises, manages, and assumes the risks of an enterprise. An entrepreneur visualises a business, takes bold steps to establish undertaking, coordinates the various factors of production and gives it a start.Entrepreneurs are the owners of the business Who Contribute the capital and bear the risk of uncertainties in business life. Entrepreneur is action – oriented and highly motivated. He has the ability to evaluate business opportunities, to gather the necessary resources to take advantage of them and to initiate appropriate action to ensure success. Entrepreneur is associated with innovations.He is the main factor of production. Entrepreneur takes decision regarding what to produce, how to produce, where to produce and for whom to produce. He mobilises other factors of production namely, land, labour, capital, organisation and initiates production process. He is responsible for both the profit or the loss. In India, Birla, Tata, Modi are big entrepreneurs.

Many people dream of becoming entrepreneurs someday. But it made me realize that there other factors that needs to be taken into consideration. We need to ask ourselves are we ready to take the challenge to the outside world. Not everyone have the vision, innovation and creativity to become an entrepreneur. The individual must have a positive attitude and accept the responsibility, have discipline to meet their goals, and take action when the opportunity presents itself. Many prefer a job security and rely on a weekly paycheck, while entrepreneurs will take risks and doesn ‘t have that luxury to know the amount of their income.

Starting your own business can be exciting and it can become a well- rewarded experience. Being your own business includes great benefits,
Businesses trying to survive the current economic crisis need to pursue competitive advantages and empower them. Competitive advantage results from matching core competencies to the opportunities. The entrepreneur that I interviewed uses her experience, quality, consistency and overall learned what the customers really need and demand. Jane’s skills and experience enable her to respond faster to market changes. Jane has remarkable negotiation and sales skills that make her a most competitive in the market. There are also questions that you need to ask yourself to determine if you are ready to take the next step. Are you able to think of new ideas? Can you imagine new ways of solving problems? Entrepreneurs should think creatively. If you have ideas learn how take advantage of new opportunities. Be your own boss also means that you are responsible for making difficult decisions. The business world involves uncertainty. Do you avoid the uncertainty in life at all costs? If so, owning your own business is not the best.

Freelancing hits success

In the modernized world, many hang back from working under anyone for a long term and wish to create their work independently and just offer their potentials to an entity. They are the freelancers who are always self employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long time. Freelancer is an independent worker who earn money on a per job or per task basis for a short term work. This has become a well known career choice for a lot of people these times. Freelancing professionals work in a wide area of fields across many industries and companies. Although there are plentiful opportunities available for freelancing, the most popular fields are content writing, designing, sales & marketing, branding, recruiting, web development, teaching, copywriting, photography, SEO, social media. The prominent fact is that you should possess the requisite skills for the job/project and make a good income out of it.

Perks of freelancing and success rate

Where many other jobs demand constraints for time and work places, Freelancers can work anytime and from anywhere with the freedom to set your own pace, take projects for several companies, so freelancing offers many flexibilities which helps to maintain a good work-life balance. The benefit of being a freelancer is that you are not restricted to a specific 9 to 5 schedule and choose work in line with your preferences and choose clients/ companies you want to work with, which allows you to pursue in your own interests and passion. According to a payoneer’s data, the average freelancer worked 36 hours a week at a rate of $21per hour, for an annual pretax salary of more than $39,000. This was significantly higher than the average salary for non-freelancers in most of the countries in the survey.

The money you make is utterly dependent upon the quality of work and how much effectually you work. While people argue that freelancing can impact a person’s financial security and long term career goals, freelances find their work to be obliging in making their lives less stressful. They have the authority to decide and demand for the the wages to be charged on their projects. Many freelancers are paid on hourly basis, so if they work long hours they will be able to make more finances. Employees tend to leave the jobs due to the the discontentment with the management, but in freelancing you work with freedom without anybody to constantly keep breathing down on your neck. With people searching out for an enduring job to obtain more income they spend half their life, freelancing makes it more accessible for people to gain good income by investing your potentials and skills in a short time. It may takes years for some people to get promoted to a higher level and have a hike in their salary but freelancing makes you get closer to the income you dreamt of in a short time with your quality work.

On the other side this may seem unstable for some without any steady income over the years. You may perceive a fluctuation in the workload, where you’ll be swamped with work one month but not the same the next month like a feast- famine cycle. It carries an unpredictable nature of work and wages with no paid time off or medical leave. Many people are susceptible to turn away from this because of such drawbacks. If you really staunch and determined about being a freelancer you should be disciplined, consistent and organized. You should engage yourself in multiple projects, never become distracted or unstable in the field. Keep a track of your work and manage them efficiently. However the work may be unsteady you should be able to market yourself. There is a just fine line between the advantages and snags, here the perks of freelancing greatly outweigh the drawbacks. If you are good at a job sky is the limit to how much you can sprout your business.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos ,(born January 12, 1964) Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S., entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon became the largest retailer on the world wide Web and the model for Internet sales.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964. His mother, Jackie, was in her teens when he was born and she was only married to his biological father for about a year. She married Mike Bezos when Jeff was four years old. Mike was a Cuban who escaped to the United States when he was fifteen. He put himself through college in New Mexico and eventually became an engineer at Exxon.Jeff went to Princeton and studied electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a GPA of 4.3 on a 4.0 scale.After he graduated from Princeton, Jeff joined a high-tech startup in New York called FITEL. After two years at FITEL, he joined Bankers Trust Company.

At Bankers Trust, he setup…show more content…He helped the company build the most technically advanced hedge funds on Wall Street. In 1994, Jeff read a statistic that said the Internet was growing at a rate of 2300% per year. He decided to leave D.E. Shaw and Company to form Amazon.com, which he named after the seemingly endless South American River.He and his wife, MacKenzie, drove to Seattle to be close to a book wholesaler called Ingram. Jeff, a programmer named Shel Kaphan, and a contractor named Paul Barton-Davis built the prototype for Amazon.com in Jeff’s garage in Seattle.

They spent a year developing database programs and creating the website.Jeff raised a million dollars to finance the company through twenty-two angel investors, whom consisted of family, friends, and former colleagues. On July 16, 1995, Amazon.com went live to the world and Jeff told the testers to spread the word that it was open. Within 30 days, the company had sold books to all fifty states and forty-five foreign counties. By September, the site had sales of $20,000 a week. Jeff has a unique management style. He invokes loyalty from his employees and most of them see him as a colleague. He has a distinctive, loud laugh that he uses to “charm and disarm” people. He is known as a fun person to work with, but his employees and investors know that he is serious about his company.

When Jeff Bezos first started his virtual venture, he wanted to call the company Cadabra, as in abracadabra. He phoned his Seattle lawyer to try out the name, but the attorney misheard Bezos and replied, “Cadaver! Why would you want to call your company that?” Bezos quickly reconsidered and adopted the name Amazon.com, after the world’s second-largest river.Despite Amazon’s stunning revenue numbers—the company’s gross profit in 2019 neared $115 billion—it hardly ever declares a major profit, as Bezos’ strategy has always been to reinvest profits into the company’s growth. But that doesn’t bother Jeff Bezos. “To be profitable [now] would be would be a bad decision,” he told PC Week. “This is a critical formative time if you believe in investing in the future.” By expanding the site’s offerings far beyond it’s initial book inventory, Bezos has turned Amazon into the largest online retailer in the world. “There are always three or four brands that matter,” Bezos told PC Week. “With the lead we have today, we should be the No. 1 player.”Amazon’s runaway growth has made Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world. By owning 12 percent of the company, Bezos’ net worth is estimated to be $116 billion. He maintains the world’s richest man status despite going through a divorce in with wife MacKenzie, who received 4% of Amazon in the settlement (valued at $38 billion). But you wouldn’t know how rich Bezos is from his pay stub. He has collected the same $81,840 salary from the company for over two decades.

4 MUST READ BOOKS TO START YOUR OWN STARTUP

1. ZERO TO ONE

Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in American and a new way of thinking about innovation. It starts by learning to ask the question that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

2. THE LEAN STARTUP

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate  business plans, the lean startup offers entrepreneurs- in companies of all sizes – a way to test their vision continuously, to adopt and adjust before its too late. The author provides scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

3. THE FOUNDERS DILEMMAS

The founder dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like EVAN WILLIAMS of twitter and TIM WESTERGREN of Pandora, while mining quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders.

People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups. This book offers solutions.

4. HOOKED

The author of this book provides practical insights to create user habits that stick , actionable steps for building products people love, fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to Bible app, and many other habit forming products.

QUESTIONS YOU NEED TO AS YOURSELF BEFORE STARTING A BUSINESS

1. Why are you starting the business?

First of all defining the why behind what you are doing is most important, If you aren’t clear about why you are doing what you are doing then its better to quitting that thing.


2. What value are you going to add in other peoples life?

Ask yourself whether you are going to add value to other peoples life, whether you are going to bring comfort in others life. If the answer is yes, then definitely your business will sustain in the market.

3. How well are you mentally prepared to start the business?

For starting a business you need to be mentally strong enough. Running a business includes a lot of problem solving tasks, pressure ,bear losses, patience. Therefore you need to be mentally strong enough to handle all such situations.

4. Is there any easier way ?

Most entrepreneurs think if the problem is hard then there should be a complicated solution to the complicated problem but if your are creating any product then always think how you can make it more easier for its end consumers.

5. Is it really worth it ?

Ask yourself that it is actually worth it doing this particular thing because you are going to spend a lot of time on that thing, I know you can’t predict this too early but being realistic is more important that being optimistic.

START YOUR OWN BUSINESS PART-2

From the previous article, we learned about how important passion and profession are. What are the simplest ways to earn money from some of the businesses and most probably with the lowest investments. In this part, we will uproot some more businesses which can give you a stable income and highly demanded fields.

BAKING BUSINESS:

Baking business is one of the simplest ways to earn money. If you are great at cooking and love to bake this will be the best way for you to follow your passion. You can bake different types of delicious cakes. People always would love to have homemade foods and things. Thus, they will crave cakes too… You can even start this in your kitchen with a regular oven and other materials. You can even do chocolates, cookies. Sweets are the best to gift someone. Thus, there will be no negative statements to this idea. If you are also a creative person you can decorate and wrap them beautifully to attract the audience.

BOOK MERCHES:

Book merches are none other than book-related things and products. for Example, If you are a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia books or movies You can create some bookish merch which is related to the theme of NARNIA. Like, A printed coffee mug with a book theme (A famous quote or picture of the characters in the mug), enamel pins with the image of The Lion Aslan. Badges with the images or the quotes from the books. Postcards stamps, T-shirts even you can do a scarf with the quotes like a newspaper look. Most of the readers would love to have them in their showcase as well as in their Book photographs. And you can sell, key chains, bookmarks, bags, wallets, book sleeves, tote bags, Polaroids photos, watches necklace rings anything and everything related to books. There is a huge demand for these things among book bloggers and collectors. Especially, if you did customized products.

WORKSHOPS:

Conducting workshops is merely like teaching online or offline. It depends on your comfort zone. If you know any of the passions that are mentioned above or upcoming ideas or even any other related ideas you can do them to start your own workshop. For example, If you know mandala artworks you can teach them online or offline and for teaching them you can collect some amount as tuition fees. Remember, teaching is one of the precious Jobs in the whole world knowledge is not free. Even though if it comes free it’s not easy to teach someone. You should have some passion for teaching. And you should provide notes instructions videos and other requirements about the Art that you want to teach. Some of the ideas that you can carry out, if you know any of examples like, Journal makings, skincare products making, baking, Fashion designings, paper making, language skills if you have any bilingual skills like, German, French, Spanish, English, and Japanese, etc You can teach them and can get loads of money. Because students love learning new languages and there is a huge demand for bilingual People.


If you have passion for anything from the above… Start to develop the skill to take up as a passionate business. Most of the billionaires started from nothing. If they can why you can’t? If you can’t then who can? Let’s make our passions into actions.

Start your own business – Part 1

During the lockdown, most of us lost our jobs and most of us got less paid than our actual wages due to the unpredictable economic statics and decrease percentage. So, everyone started to realize one passive income is not sufficient to run our lifestyle, especially in this pandemic situation. We always need two carriers to make money and satisfy our life needs.

  • One is PROFESSION
  • Another one is PASSION


A profession is something that you don’t hate but you do that to move on in day-to-day life. And passion is something that you love to do and doing that without any expectations. Nowadays nothing is free except viruses. So, even though if you love your passion as much as you even don’t give a second thought to get money out of it. You have to change that pessimistic mentality. Everything is an opportunity to improve both sides. That’s called Win and win solution. If you are teaching something he is earning knowledge and you are earning your deeds as money. So, how one can begin a start-up business? We are going to look at the most possible works to do without a large sum of investment. But, still get some side income from them. You don’t need to find a location or giant machines or decorating them etc… All you need is essential types of equipment for the idea in your mind and some Magic in your hands to achieve your destination. You can work from your home and sell them on Social Media like amazon, Instagram or you can even create your own website to place your products at one point.

Costume designing:

Costume designing is the best way to make a good profit out of essentials. All you need is an innovative mind, designing knowledge, fabrics, and sewing machine. And some customers must have their own ideas about their idea costumes. So, you can even customize your orders according to your customers. And trust me customizing optional website are countable in India. But people require customizing costume designers. You can do costumes like scarfs, veils, hats, dresses and innovative fashion and eligant costumes. Especially, people will roll over the red carpet for you if you sell them at affordable ranges.

Skincare products Making:

Skincare making is the Bestest economical friendly business. It doesn’t need higher investments but still, you can get a good profit if your products are reasonable and if you have magic in your hands to treat someone’s skin problem.

Nowadays skin problems are common to every human. If getting rid of the skin problems are one side. But, choosing a product to give a try is something everyone confuses. You can do skin products to the people’s according to the type of skin. People will celebrate you once they get visible changes. And people love natural ingredients without side effects keep it noted. There is a huge demand for good home-made products like hair oils, hair wash powders, soaps, cleansers, face packs, serums, etc.,

Some extra amount is something that no one will say no to. We will enroot many passionate start-up businesses like this in our upcoming articles. So, it’s time to switch our passion into action.

Budding entrepreneurship amidst the youth

For many the word entrepreneurship sounds like an intricate term, which we think that are associated only with people doing large businesses, world wide. But it is the concept of developing, managing and promoting a business platform which could be relevant to the field of interest that one has in line to gain profit. There is a major misconception that a business investment deals with more money. But the young entrepreneurs come up with impalpable investments which can remarkably attribute to the growth of a business like innovation, skills, creative thinking, time management, energy and of course monetary sources also take an integral part but not a major part. Especially in this pandemic many of the young people have made their venture into businesses through the digital platform which turned into a good of source of income for many. Youth entrepreneurship has a huge impact on the social and economic progress of the society. It is regarded as a promising alternative and help sustain growing economies and lead to a viable development. At one point, every individual after the completion of their studies would be striving hard discovering for opportunities to get a job in the government or a corporate sector thinking that their life would be settled and if they don’t acquire so, they would be distressed about their career. So one of the major challenges faced by most of the countries is unemployment. But now the tables have turned and individuals pursuing their studies on one hand have also started framing opportunities for themselves in accordance with the field that fascinates them, which could be on a small scale. Working towards Youth Entrepreneurship programs can aid solving problems that are currently challenged by the countries and could pave way for a better future.

In the mean time the hobbies have evolved into professions. For instance if a person is good at artistic works and drawing portraits he gets into the sphere of vending personalized gifts through online platform. The teenage girls who have been doing henna designs for their set of family for various get togethers are now online providing their work for many brides out for marriages. There are many blooming fashion designers who have been just designing costumes for themselves before, but then through the help of digital platforms and social media have started their own clothing line. Blogging, publishing own books, teaching online courses, launching podcasts, handmade goods, thrift stores, freelancing, web development, baking & selling pastry items and we can just bundle up examples about the several establishments of the budding young entrepreneurs.

Inspiration has nothing to do with the age factor. People who do quality and consistent work can inspire many and here are such inspirational young entrepreneurs who have given rise to very successful and engrossing start ups .

Ritesh Agarwal is a smart young man behind the OYO rooms and he is the founder and the CEO of the same. He is the world’s second youngest billionaire in 2021.

Sreelakshmi Suresh is a web designer holding the titles of World’s Youngest CEO and World’s youngest web designer. She started meddling with computers at the age of 3, started designing at 4, and came up with her first website at the age of 6.

Tilak Mehta , a 15 year old boy founder of Paper n Parcel is the World’s Youngest entrepreneur who made Digital Courier company with the help of ‘Mumbai Dabbawala’ and he was awarded Global Child Prodigy 2020.

Trishneet Arora is the founder and CEO of TAC security, a cyber security company. He has written books on cyber security, ethical hacking and web defence. He started his own company at the age of 19.

Akhilendra Sahu is a young serial entrepreneur form India. He is the founder and CEO of ASTNT technologies Pvt Ltd., He was 17 years old when he started his career as a freelancer. He ranked on India’s top 10 young Indian entrepreneur $ top 10 young digital influencers.

Aditi Gupta is an Indian author and co-founder of Menstrupedia Comic. Menstrupedia provides a user-friendly guide to menstruation, hygiene and puberty and break myths associated to them.

Entrepreneurs are the cluster of individuals who are reluctant to be one among all and frames out some innovative roadmaps to stand out form others, who defy to stick to the conservative thinking and wants to be out of the box. The three important keys that a budding entrepreneur should know are, PROMOTE NEW IDEAS, ACCELERATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INVEST IN STARTUPS USING YOUR INGENUITY. Technology has enabled progress in all fields. The digital platform plays a very pivotal role in the upliftment of the young entrepreneurs and boosts the inner entrepreneurship in us. The world is been swamped with countless possibilities and opportunities. When you become certain about what you need you get a step closer to success and cling on to both hard work and smart work. To become a successful entrepreneur be hungry and ambitious on your goals. To persist in the same domain willpower, assertiveness and perseverance are very vital because every field is indulged with risks. Never halt in the career with the same mindset you started with, evolve with time. Aspire to inspire people!!!

Book Review: Free lancing guide, Pyjama Profit

Vaishali Singh (Cheenu Singh Rathore)

If you want to build an indepebdent free lance career right away then here is the solution, the book Pyjama profit is a free lancing guide, it has the answers of all the questions wandering in your mind whenever you think of this one word ‘freelancing’ grab your copy and start doing what you love to do and get paid for it.

So here is a short and concise review of the book.

The millennial’s guide to a sustainable freelance career, it is the tagline of one of the best selling books on Amazon, ‘PYJAMA PROFIT’ the authors of the book are Varun Mayya and Abhinav Chhikara. The books is all about their journeys from the freelancing to a successful and stable business, the co author of the book Varun Mayya says “Tommorow, if you put me in a strange country without any resources, all I need is a laptop and an internet connection and I know I’ll build myself an awesome life fairly quick.”

Pyjama profit is a modern guide to free lancing. The book talks about the in demand online skills, the different paths one can take to become an expert in specific fields and the freedom that freelancing allows to hone further skills, taking on bigger assignments. A stable income from freelancing was the bedrock that allowed the authors – Varun and Abhinav to pursue their dreams and passions. Now, they have shared their stories of what worked for them and how anyone, anywhere can thrive without being tied to a 9 to 5 job. The book is a perfect fit in today’s time as the freelance economy grows and so do the aspiration among millennials to find a work they love, and not just something that pays their bills.