Vineeta Singh is one of India's most popular businesswomen, who continues to inspire many budding entrepreneurs nationwide. She is the CEO and co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics, which is one of the most profitable companies in India's beauty and skincare sector. Although Vineeta is a renowned business personality in India's business sector, but it's fair to say that it was her appearance in India's first business reality show, Shark Tank India, that sky-rocketed her popularity and made her a household name.
After getting a lot of fame for the way she used to encourage pitchers at Shark Tank India, Vineeta Singh is a constant name in the headlines as of now. For instance, Vineeta dominated the headlines in February 2024 when, in an interview with ET NOW, the co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics talked about the challenges she had faced when she was starting her entrepreneurial journey.
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Vineeta Singh recalled the time when she was raising funds for her company, SUGAR Cosmetics, and admitted that more than 100 venture capitalists had rejected her. She further added that when receiving all those rejections, she had decided to keep all the rejection letters with the intention to prove them wrong. However, Vineeta also admitted that the market was quite different back in 2015, and she wouldn't blame them, but she made a point that people should convert rejections into fuel for their success. She said:
"I think for us it was pretty hard. We probably had more than 100 Venture Capitalists that rejected us. Yes, we have all the rejection letters saved because they make for real inspiration because you know when somebody says that no to you, then you know that's a different level of motivation to actually prove them wrong. But, we wouldn't blame them for it because the market was very different in 2015."
Vineeta Singh was born in 1983 in Gujarat's Anand district. While her mother (name not known) is a PhD holder, her father, Tej Pal Singh is one of India's biggest biophysicists. For the unversed, Vineeta's father, Tej Pal Singh is renowned for his work in the development of drug design in the fields of antibacterial therapeutics, gastropathy, cancer, tuberculosis, and inflammation.
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Tej Pal Singh received a series of prestigious awards because of his incredible contribution to rational structure-based drug design, X-ray crystallography, and structural biology of proteins. Not only this, he is the first Indian to receive all six Ramanachandran Awards. Despite being the daughter of such an esteemed biophysicist, it is quite inspiring how Vineeta never took advantage of her father's fame and still built a company from scratch like any entrepreneur in the world.
The co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics, Vineeta Singh has a solid educational background. The ace entrepreneur completed her schooling at Delhi Public School, RK Puram. For graduation, she went to the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, where she earned a B.Tech in electrical engineering.
After completing her graduation in 2005, Vineeta Singh enrolled at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to do post-graduation in the MBA programme. While she was doing her MBA at IIM, Vineeta did a summer internship at the famous international investment company, Deutsche Bank. Courtesy of her tremendous performance, she reportedly got a job offer from the Deutsche Bank, but she turned it down.
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Once, in an interview with Curly Tales, Vineeta Singh recalled the time when she got a job offer of Rs. 1 crore per annum. Sharing details about the same, she shared that an investment company offered her this huge offer, but she declined it due to her aspiration to become an entrepreneur. After rejecting such a lucrative offer, Vineeta was earning just Rs. 10,000 from her startup, and she admitted that she regretted her decision a few times, but her dream to become an entrepreneur was too big to turn down. She said:
"It was the first time in IIM Ahmedabad, there was one bank that actually stepped up and said, if we can give this to graduates from Harvard or Wharton, why are we not giving it to Indian B-school graduates? And they decided to up that offer to Rs 1 crore."
Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee met back in 2007 when both of them were doing MBA at IIM, Ahmedabad. After some frequent meetings, they started dating, as both of them wanted to be an entrepreneur. Once they were done with their post-graduation, Vineeta and Kaushik founded two startups, Quetzal (in 2007) and Fab-Bag (in 2012), before building SUGAR Cosmetics. While working on their entrepreneurial journey, Vineeta and Kaushik tied the marital knot on December 4, 2011. In the coming years, the couple welcomed two children, Vikrant Mukherjee and Ranveer Mukherjee.
After gaining enough experience from two startups, Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee recognised a huge gap in India's beauty sector. They decided to build a brand catering to different skin tones and preferences. In 2012, Vineeta and Kaushik connected with 200,000 women across India who shared their beauty preferences, which became the foundation of their business, SUGAR Cosmetics. It was in 2015 when Vineeta and Kaushik started their direct-to-consumer beauty and cosmetic brand, SUGAR Cosmetics.
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Two major things that worked brilliantly for SUGAR Cosmetics over the years were the affordable prices of their products and the fact that 75% of their workforce is female. While the pricing gave an edge against their competitors, having a female workforce contributed heavily to their brand image.
It was in 2019 when the first store of SUGAR Cosmetics was established in Uttar Pradesh. As per the official website of SUGAR Cosmetics, Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee's beauty brand has more than 1M+ downloads on the app stores, 125+ stores across India, and becoming the no. 1 consumer brand in India.
According to a report in DNA, SUGAR Cosmetics is worth Rs. 4100 crores as of now and continues to grow at an impressive speed. Talking about it's co-founder, Vineeta Singh's net worth, it is around the estimated sum of Rs. 300 crores.
It's incredible how Vineeta Singh built a Rs. 4100 crore company with her husband, Kaushik Mukherjee, after rejecting a job offer of Rs. 100 crore. What are your thoughts about it? Let us know.
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