 Good evening, everybody. My name is Kaushik. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Sugar Cosmetics. I'm hoping by now at least the women in the audience have tried out our products. Please, let's have a show off and say, oh, yes, thank you so much. You know, this is lovely, because now when I ask at least, there are a few hands that go up. Otherwise, I remember those days very vividly when I would be like, should I pull off this stunt with this audience or no? Okay, you know, Google, I'm feeling lucky button. Let me try it. And there have been many audiences where I'd be looking for one hand to come up and no. But nevertheless, thank you very much for... I know this is the last keynote session that's slotted. It's a very interesting topic, one that's close to my heart, and I'll tell you why, because everybody asks us that makeup, color cosmetics, beauties is a comparative category with behemoths from the largest fncg company we've looked up to over the years playing in the space. So how did you guys actually manage to find your spot in here? And, you know, there are two sides to the story. One, I could say, of course, we did amazing work. We did ABCD, but all of that would have amounted to not, unless there was a consumer whose needs were unmet. That is because our consumer had actually evolved over the last decade, and today I'm going to touch upon a few topics which highlight what had changed, what had evolved, which we were fortunate to spot, and how did we cash in on it? So without spending much time on the preamble, I wanted to start off by saying the biggest shift we've seen is that the way brands actually evolve, the way brands engage, reach out to consumers and vice-versa, engage, the way consumers engage with brands have seen a drastic shift over the last decade. Everybody knows that, because today we are all living fairly digital lives. We are connected. I mean, even now, right now, those of you who are checking your WhatsApp, don't worry, I do the same as fine. It is because there is somebody who's communicating with us right now, and you know, we want to see what it's at. How has that changed, and what does this do to our attention span? I think for brands, there was a time when the mandate was fairly simple. You have a budget. You have your set channels of television, print, billboards, wherein you have to communicate the same channel, same messaging across. And you put all your eggs in one basket, and you pick a campaign for the year, and you go all in on it. Of course, it worked, and that's not past tense. It still works. The only thing is it's a very unidimensional way for a brand to communicate what it stands for, what it wants to champion, what it wants to talk about, what it wants to be known for to its audience. Then came a period when brands realized that, okay, people are getting to know about me, not just from my distribution, not just from television, not just from print, but from what are these? Oh, these are blogs. Okay, people are giving their own opinion on my products, on my services, and that's when it became important to start understanding that the reputation of a brand, the impression of a brand is not tightly controlled by the brand itself any longer. There are people in the middle who are also putting their own flavor off it. Now, which was great for a while, but the thing about blogs is that blogs had very limited audience. When social media platforms exploded, that's when you realized that nobody had the time to go through and read, spend 10 minutes reading a blog, which is why the term blogger got replaced by influencers fairly quickly, and that's when brands realized that, okay, now it's not enough what I communicate on ATL and primetime television. It's also about what everyday micro conversations are happening on these different social media platforms. How do I even try controlling that? Or how do I even try navigating that? I mean, you can try, but you can never get it perfect, because ultimately, the experience we provide, the products, the agency, they speak for itself. And of course, right now, the number of, the sheer number of influencers, micro influencers, it's easier to be a person, to be somebody who has an opinion on a product or services. What does this do to a brand? This pushes a brand to evolve. So there are two, this basically poses a question in front of a brand. They're, okay, your target consumer is changing. The way they want to engage with you is changing. Do you think it's important to cater to them? Now, for a lot of brands, especially in our category, I realize that this was seen as a niche, that, okay, I remember there was a time when we used to speak to our partners, like, say, Mintha and Ika, Amazon, and they'd always, especially horizontal platforms. And the conversation would be, it's so difficult to get a top navigation category button, drop down for beauty as a category, because it was not big enough. But that's the beauty about India. Today, what is niche becomes very big tomorrow. And today, everybody wants to make content, everybody wants to make a beauty and personal care play. But the magic of India lies in the fact that if you can identify a niche and go deep into it, build a reputation in it, I think that's when you can own the category when it becomes mainstream, which is about accurate. This is what happened to us. So I, you know, when I say then and now, I don't mean, I literally mean then and now. It's not that the now has replaced the then, but the way the whole funnel has worked for brands over the years, how do you get the attention of a consumer? Earlier, it used to be very limited channels. Now, there are channels multiplexing each other. There are social media. There's how do you generate interest? Earlier, it used to be very clear, okay, you know, like, like foul, like legendary brands, you know, of the large FNCG companies. They were very clear and direct and say, this is my product, USB, buy it, or this is my, this is how attractive the price is, buy it. But now the audience wants more. Why do they want more? Because there is no, there is no only Kingfisher in the market anymore. There's Kingfisher, there's Beera, there's so many else. So why, you know, whether they ask you directly on your face or not, brands do ask, why you? Why should I purchase you when I have the choice of so many new brands? So this is when a lot of brands like us, who are able to cater to the audience, that is asking questions. Because, see, let's get it straight. A lot of people don't ask questions. They are the mass, they are the mass. But for those who are experimenters, who are willing to let new brands get a foot in the door, these are the consumers who have evolved. They are also the taste makers. So if we identify these consumers and say, okay, let me create something which this consumer is asking for, and I'll show a slide where we talk about a specific example. That, at least in our category, we've seen goes a long way because they then spread the word about, okay, you know what, this is something that this new brand is doing differently. And that helps brands, especially new brands like us put our foot in the door, observing and applying the fact that consumers have evolved. I want to move on to, I'll come, I'll circle back to this slide later. Because for me, when I talk about brand-evolving, brand breaks into three pillars. How have your products evolved? How has the content around your brand and products evolved? And thirdly, how has your buying experience evolved? But if I were to just talk about product evolution for a change, it's very easy to understand simple example. Historically, makeup usage peaked mostly after 30, 28, 30 age. And usually what happens is, as you grow older, your skin loses hydration. So when your skin loses hydration, you're not able to pull off very, very deep matte formulations, which is why you would find that most of the lipstick formulations that were very popular, especially about a decade back, they were creamy mattes. Now the thing about creamy mattes is they're very comfortable to wear, but there's feathering, there's transferring, and you need to keep applying it. Now the audience which we were talking to seemed to have evolved from there, and mostly because they started using makeup at a far younger age. And when your skin is that hydrated, you can pull off and be comfortable with a far matter formula, deep matte formula. What does a deep matte formula do? It lasts longer without feathering, without transferring. And when, you know, I don't quote this story often, but back in 2015, we actually went with this observation to some of the large beauty players, two of them we went to at least, and we said, you know, this is the observation which we are seeing from our other business, also in this space, it was a beauty subscription service space. There seems to be a demand for deep matte products, which are drying, but very long lasting. And the answer we got from the larger companies was that, you know, we can't do this. We can't do this because our core audience, it will antagonize our core audience, because our core audience is the average age, purchasing ages say 32, and this is too drying for them. To be fair, they were completely correct, because yes, it would antagonize the existing audience, but we had very strong data to back that, you know, for the younger audience, this would fly, which is why one of the earliest products we launched was this liquid lipstick product that used. And I, you know, even now if, you know, if somebody asks me which is that one product which helped you enter 100,000 doors, 100,000 families to actually get the brand its escape velocity to start with, it would be this product. Similarly, there were other, you know, if I can take many stories, of course, but in the interest of time, eyeliners, for example. Historically, we've always had very glossy, shiny eyeliners. Why? Because makeup has always been seen as an occasion-based wear. But our customers have evolved, because when makeup shifts from being an occasion-based wear to a regular wear, and I don't need to read an article to say that. It's in office. I mean, there was a time when you'd hear, over here conversation that somebody's come in maybe, maybe not wearing a casual or a cold, which is perfectly okay. And friends are asking, hey, are you feeling unwell today? Or it's become as ubiquitous as toothpaste now. So when we see that, we realize that one can't wear glossy eyeliners to work every day. Makeup has to be more matte, more subtle. But the market didn't have that, because that was not what used to push the numbers, and that was not what you'd find selling in the larger channels, like modern pre-order general trade. So understanding the fact that the need of consumers have changed, one of, and when I say need, I also harp upon unstated needs. This is a review from 2017. It's a very telling review, and we have this blown up at our office just as a reminder. Now, somebody left a review about the liquid lipstick, the same one I spoke about, and it's amazing. They ask for so many things while not literally stating out any one particular thing. They don't want, our audience doesn't have time for touch-ups. They want world-class quality. They want at an affordable price. They don't want a single swipe application. No two applications. It should dry rapidly. Now, you know, there are so many deconstructed needs in this one review that when we look at it, the literal mandate to our product team is that look at this. This is how demanding the audience is today. So if we're able to, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, if we're able to solve for at least half of these, the product is going to be a hit product. So when we, you know, we don't need to guess this right now because historically there's a way in which formulations have been made, gross margins of products have been protected, but the way brands are evolving right now, I think there's enough and more material out There, whether it be reviews of, of course, platforms like nike, amazon, everywhere, or, you know, focus group Discussions, which are, which of course take longer, which Give us cues as to how brands can be built. Similar tangent on content. Earlier content used to be about simply focusing on, okay, this is the product that's available, new and improved formulation available at a retest store and the audience, but the audience is asking why, and when your audience ask why you, it has to be more than just a hardcore product push. So which is why we are cognizant of the fact that there are multiple platforms that have evolved over the period of time. For example, YouTube is great for longer format content, which is maybe five to six minutes, wherein you take your time and patiently educate your audience about what your product or brand does, but, but it's not, it is one of the most vibrant platform, but not the most vibrant platforms for us, especially its Instagram. What do you do on Instagram where the attention span is almost like that of a goldfish? You learn to condense your content. You learn to mix it up with entertainment, not just education, and keep talking about things which hit a chord with your audience. And this is something I think, I mean, we made a lot of mistakes over the years, but this is something I think we've genuinely done well. We've spoken consistently about multiple different pillars that the brand communication has been built on, whether it be inclusivity about how there are 22 different shades in our foundation range from light to deep, about how individuality, metal, being bold and free. So these are not flash in the pan campaign. They've been like pushed out, communicated. We've had two-way communications with our audience on this. And when we leverage social media to do that, that helps us rack up an enormous number of views. I mean, this, we currently get about 410 million impressions through our own channels on social media. And this is not even, if you look at the whole paid earned, owned model, this doesn't even capture the earned media, which happens when others talk about our products. And this is the end result of this is this. When you talk about how brands evolve, from October 19 to this is a little dated till February 21, we kept tracking our followers on Instagram. And this is how the black line is the sugar cosmetics Instagram account. So we are seeing a similar trajectory now in YouTube as well. But this is something which new age brands have learned to do well, carry on the conversation to platform where the brand is more natively, natively trust the brand, natively more engaged. And the last part about commerce, I know there's a question every brand faces that should I, which platforms should I sell on? And for larger brands, the question is should I sell on an online platform? Should I sell on an app? There's this new metaverse store? Should I sell over there? And for brands like us, smaller brands, younger brands, the question is when can we break through to the big boy tables of general trade, modern trade? I think today's there's no either or. I mean, when we look at all the channels that are there, it's a matter of us, it's not a matter of where to sell because ultimately the customer will always purchase from where she is used to purchase from because she trusts the platform. So for brands, if you're trying to maintain trust and saliency across channels, it's a tough to ask to convince a consumer to a, buy your product, b, add to the price that you're selling, see through the channel which you want them to purchase in. It's too much to ask for, which is why as a brand we've shifted our stance from there. We said they're all important to us. DTC is important, but being a DTC brand is not important. Being a large, loved brand is important, which is why I think some of our earlier notions, sugar used to be called a DTC brand, we still get called a DTC brand, but not many people know that 55% of our revenues are actually from retail and not from DTC. So hopefully it'll start showing up in some of the reports. So I'd like to end with this because there's this large, red, zero, I see flashing over here right now. But sugar as a brand has evolved over a period of time through the evolutions we've seen in our product, in our content, in our commerce. And I think evolution is given. Evolution will happen whether we like it or not, because our customers are evolving. And the minute, as long as we remember that the brands exist to serve the consumer, we'll have no option but to evolve with them. So thank you very much. Happy to take any questions if there are, but thanks for the patient audience.