"IncNut is profitable": Chaitanya Nallan

Kindly shed light on your entrepreneurial journey. What inspired you to launch Skinkraft?

 SkinKraft was born out of two undeniable truths about the current skin care industry. From our experiences while building India’s largest beauty and wellness media platform Stylecraze.com, we understood that each person’s skin is unique. In fact, people born into the same family have different skin characteristics; people living the same lifestyle have different skin issues. Even twins have different skin behavioral patterns. A generic product, mass-produced by an FMCG company cannot be the most effective approach to skin care. In fact, these products encourage trial and error skin care where one ends up damaging their skin in the long term leading to premature ageing of the skin.

Also shed light on your business model? What were the initial challenges and how did you address them?

SkinKraft offers customizable skincare regimen. The customer answers a dermatologist-approved questionnaire on their skin, lifestyle etc and they are recommended skin care products with specific ingredients. Customers buy, use these products and give us feedback based on which further changes, if necessary, are recommended. Data and algorithms drive all recommendations.

 Data driven customization as a concept has emerged only in the recent few years. In India we are seeing few players who are working around this category, but nobody is doing at a mass scale as we are.  To our advantage the market is ripe for disruption with the growing frustration with the generic and mass produced FMCG products and the unrewarding cycle of trial and error. 

We are driving awareness around the subcategory of customization - how it differs from the traditional setup and more importantly empowering the customers with confidence in their choices ( i.e choosing the right skincare products).

What are the current distribution points of Skinkraft? Kindly shed light on your target group and units sold of daily basis?

We are a Direct to Consumer (DTC) brand and products are exclusively sold via our website SkinKraft.com. Close to a million women have registered and taken our unique SkinID questionnaire for an in-depth skin analysis. Most of SkinKraft customers belong to the Tier 1 cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and hyderabad. We grew from selling zero to 30K Regimens per month, i.e 90K units per month at an annual run rate of 36Cr in a short span of 9 months.

What is the USP of Skinkraft? How does it stand out to contemporary brands?

We are a data driven cosmetic company that bring customization to the forefront.  We understand the frustration that stems from the prevalent trial and error approach that most women engage in and with SkinKraft they can finally put an end to it. 

 At SkinKraft, our dermatologically driven questionnaire guides the customer through a series of questions ranging from the current skin health to lifestyle markers. With this information, the customer is classified into one of 72 broad profiles each of which breaks down into thousands of combinations. A customized skin care regimen is recommended to the customer which includes ingredients corresponding to the specific requirements as outlined in the customer’s skin profile.

Are you bootstraped or have raised any sorts of funds so far?

 IncNut is profitable.We secured a seed round of Rs 50 lakh from Venture East in 2013. In 2018, Japanese conglomerate brand Istyle acquired Venture East’s stake for Rs 28 crores. Apart from this initial seed round we have not raised funds.

 Do you also offer men's care range?

SkinKraft caters to women at present. We are looking at expanding our lineup to men in the coming year.

 

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