Built On An Ethos Of Environmental Sustainability & Ethical Production: Shweta Gupta & Darshana Balagopal, Co-Founders, Aardae
Usually, international brands come to India, yours is other way around, pls share the thought behind this? What is your vision?
We believe that Indian conscious beauty brands have everything it takes in terms of formulation, processes and efficacy to succeed on the international market. The one thing that was lacking was a platform that could distribute their products abroad, especially one as comprehensive as ours. Aardae brings the best of homegrown/indie conscious beauty to the world, thus helping India become a more important player in a booming industry.
Which Indian brands will be available on your platform?
At present, we have over 39 brands on Aardae, offering over 1000 products. These include popular favourites such as Dot & Key, Juicy Chemistry, OCEGLOW, Earth Rhythm, SoulTree and Omorfee. We will be adding another 15 top brands to our catalogue soon.
Tell us about your offerings and targeted audience?
We connect a knowledgeable market that believes in clean beauty for their own safety as well as for environmental sustainability with top brands that create products based on the same ethos.
On what basis will they be judged as good brand?
We conduct rigorous in-house testing for every product in our catalogue. Products must be cruelty-free, transparent about ingredients and have proven efficacy in order to be included in our range. They must also have international certifications that indicate these criteria.
Internationally, what is the perception of Indian brands?
Depends on the industry and the location, but we can confidently say that South East Asia is keenly interested in Indian-made beauty brands.
Why choose Singapore and not any other southeast country?
Singapore is an eye to the world, and has a highly educated and knowledgeable consumer population. It is also a country that is renowned for stringent quality control, and this ensures that a presence there can open doors everywhere else too. We will be expanding our South East Asian presence through making the platform available in other countries there as well.
What are the investments done?
We are boot-strapped at present.
What are your exceptions with this platform?
Our expectations are that the presence of a platform like Aardae will give homegrown/indie brands the confidence to grow, knowing that their reach can be greater than ever before should they partner with us. We also believe that Aardae will inspire more growth in the clean beauty movement across the globe as well as in India. We established Aardae because we personally believe strongly in the philosophies of clean beauty, and we hope to educate more people about the same.
Do you plan to get funding through an investor, in future?
We will be open to investor funding very soon when we begin our expansion plans following the current launch stage.
Will you also come out with an IPO to become a listed company?
This is the dream of any company, and we hope to achieve this within the next five years. We are keen to explore all possibilities for growth in the future.
Who are your competitors, already existing in the market?
There are presently no comparable platforms that bring top Indian beauty brands to international markets.
Tell us about your expansion plans? Which other markets are you planning to explore?
In the next few months, we have plans for further expansion within South East Asia, specifically in Malaysia and Indonesia, followed by the Middle East and Europe.
