The Multi-Hyphenate: Kriti Sanon and Tarun Sharma Sanon believes in nature as well as science, and she wanted to create something that would hyphen both. And that's how she met, Tarun who also runs another successful D2C venture mCaffeine

While talking to Kriti Sanon, one can easily gauge that she does what she does out of sheer passion. Whether it is acting, which won her the National Award for Mimi, her skincare brand Hyphen, which recently crossed 100 crore revenue mark in just a year or her journey as a producer with Do Patti earning her new accolades.

On a summer afternoon, Entrepreneur got up, close and personal with the actor, entrepreneur and producer to understand her journey in the D2C space with her business partner Tarun Sharma of mCaffeine for launching Hyphen.

Sharing with us the idea behind her startup journey Sanon says, "It was in Covid when I really got into skincare. I think because of my profession I've always been into skincare. But I went really deep into it. As I hit my 30s, I was like; I need to start taking care of my skin even better. And being an engineer by qualification I get into the detail of everything. I got into all sorts of ingredients. I started understanding them, and then I found a gap in India in terms of the kind of quality and the products that were there. The really good quality products were just extremely expensive."

Sanon believes in nature as well as science, and she wanted to create something that would hyphen both. And that's how she met, Tarun who also runs another successful D2C venture mCaffeine.

When asked apart from price parity, what else she wanted to change with her skincare range, Sanon shares, "I like simplifying skincare. At a point, I felt like I was using five serums and every serum had one more ingredient. And I was like, why am I doing this? Why can't I put all of this in a bottle? I was using a moisturizer and a sunscreen where, I wanted both in one. So I actually wanted to hyphen a lot of things, which is why I felt like that was what was missing. Some products focused a lot on nature and natural ingredients. Some products were only, single ingredient, and I was just not getting the right combination."

Since the conceptualisation of the brand, Kriti has diligently looked into various aspects of product manufacturing, including testing the products, and the design of packaging.

Talking about the packaging and partnering with Tarun and PEP Brands, she says, "Tarun and Vaishali particularly have taught me a lot when it comes to the market, and how the customer is reacting to every product. And what is the amount that they actually want to spend on certain categories and certain products. In the beginning, I wanted the product to look a certain way. But then I realized that we need to sort of cater to the audiences and what they want to spend and what their pocket size is, when it comes to a certain category. And then I slowly sort of realized that the product is actually the celebrity."

Hyphen remains a stand-out brand in the pool of celebrityowned brands due to the unwavering commitment of its Co-founder and Chief Customer Officer, Kriti Sanon, and the rich experience of PEP Brands in the D2C arena. Kriti Sanon's passion, along with the excellent team at PEP Brands, helped the brand scale to new heights. The company's heavy investment at the beginning of the brand's journey, along with a seasoned crew of co-founders—Tarun Sharma, Saurabh Singhal, Mohit Jain, Vikas Lachhwani, and Vaishali Gupta—has aided in the smooth functioning of the brand.

Talking about the accelerated growth of the brand in just one year, Tarun Sharma says, "I think for digital brands, social media is the discovery engine. While in the last few years distribution has been set up by likes of Amazon, Flipkart and Nykaa, for us, I mean when you plot discovery and distribution, I think D2C becomes the most powerful tool because right there you are discovering the brand and right there you are distributing the brands across pin codes. So for us, D2C is the key. Social media is an enabler of D2C. While we do everything, D in D2C is data."

Hyphen is on track to reach 500 crores in customer sales within the next three years, positioning itself for continued growth and innovation.

On her brand ideology Sanon adds, "I really wanted to create something for the masses, which I would also be using. I never wanted to create products that I'm creating only for others while I'm using something else. I wanted to use my own products and create them where I approved the quality, the ingredients, the efficacy of the products, and I could make them available to people at a much more affordable rate."

Factsheet:

Bestseller: All I Need Lipscreen

Available at: HYPHEN'S official website and leading e-commerce and quick commerce platforms, including Flipkart, Amazon, BlinkIt and Nykaa

Revenue: INR 100 crore

Customers served: 1 million

Pin codes reached: 19,000