FabBag is a dream come true for so many Indian Women. The ability to try some of the best skin care brands for as low as 399/- INR per month is a blessing for those of us who like to try a number of products before deciding what suits best for our skin. FabBag sure solves a problem faced by so many women in India today.
FabBag was started by Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee as Vellvette.com in 2012 and rebranded to FabBag.com in 2013.
[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” ]FabBag is a subscription commerce based beauty subscription platform that delivers a curated bag of trial size beauty products every month to women across the country for as low as INR 399/-. FabBag gives women the opportunity to try premium, high quality products that suit them and also educates them on how to use these products. The company also has an eCommerce store where they retail several brands that are not available anywhere else online.[/box]
FabBag targets independent, beauty/ fashion conscious woman in the 20-40 age group and currently has
customers in more than 100 towns and cities, including small towns like Siliguri, Kakinada, Hissar etc. They have 100,000 registered users right now. The
current team size is 25 and most of the team operates from Powai, Mumbai.
FabBag plans to start reaching at least a million women every month in the next 5 years.
Vineeta is a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. About being an entrepreneur, Vineeta says
“I had always wanted to start up, so in 2007, I gave up an investment banking offer to start an HR outsourcing firm. We provided background verification and hiring services to large companies and ran a profitable setup in Mumbai. In 2012, when I was traveling abroad, I came across the subscription commerce space in the US and decided to launch a beauty subscription platform in India. The rest is history.”
says Vineeta. Having successfully run two companies, Vineeta has some startup leassons to share with us.
“a) To run a startup, you have to sell non-stop – Sales is the most important function for any startup and we didn’t learn sales at B-School. It’s a skill that you pick up through a lot of failures. But, it finally boils down to managing relationships well and constantly creating leads and pursuing them.
b) Only passionate, inspired teams succeed – Hiring is a challenge for every startup. And we’ve learnt the hard way that you can do a lot more with a team of passionate, inexperienced people than with a team of experienced, uninspired ones.
c) Cash is king – There are so many unpredictable situations while running a startup that you have to keep a close eye on your monthly cash flow and fund raise in advance so as to avoid being undercapitalised.”
So what is it like being a woman entrepreneur in today’s times ?
“It’s the best time to be a woman entrepreneur! There has been so much activism in the past few years that it’s almost a level playing field now for both women and men and in fact, there are several governmental and non-governmental programs that are more pro-women!
It will always be more challenging for women to balance their career and family responsibilities when compared to their male peers, but with more supportive spouses, better support systems at home and work, several role models to look up to and technology that lets you work from anywhere, anytime, I think we should see more women as Founders, CXOs, Board Members, etc. in the years to come.”
A word of advice for all the entrepreneurs out there ?
“Think big, stay focused, follow your instincts and just be yourself!”
