Big Idea

Beauty and the treat

Vellvette, a curated cosmetics company that ships beauty products suited for your skin and hair type

Call it curated cosmetics. For a small fee, the founders of Vellvette will ship you a little box every month with three samples of beauty and skin care products from brands such as Forest Essentials, Clarins, Victoria’s Secret and Crabtree & Evelyn, based on details about your type of skin and hair. They’ll also include coupons for the brand, so if you like the sample you can upgrade to the regular size at a discount. It’s not a new idea — globally, subscription e-commerce already extends to the beauty business with companies such as Birchbox, Joliebox, Glossybox. But, as IIM Ahmedabad alumni Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee point out, it is new to India, and that’s what matters. The Mumbai-based company started with 200 boxes a month and five months on, has already crossed 2,000. It has even raised early stage funding from India Quotient. Why it works: most brands provide samples to Vellvette for free, while some ask only to share logistics cost.