A: I have always believed in following my passion rather than the money, and that passion was to build my own company. So, at 23 while graduating from IIM Ahmedabad, I figured that it made more sense to jump right in rather than spend a few years in a tangential investment banking career.

A. Subscription commerce was a complicated business for India, so educating consumers on how the monthly customised beauty bag worked was proving to be expensive. While scaling Fab Bag for 3 years, we got a ringside view of the evolution of the millennial woman from wearing makeup only on occasions to everyday usage. We saw these millennials spend more time on their phones getting inspired by other real women and wanting to stay updated on the biggest global trends. We saw them shop more online. In the last 5 years, women as a percentage of eCommerce shoppers have grown from 10% to 43%. And even those who were not yet shopping online were choosing products based on the digital content they'd consumed. That's when we realised in 2015 that the timing was right to build a new-age beauty company for young India.

A. SUGAR managed to create its niche by sharply focusing on millennial customers by doing the following:

A. I think except for the seed stage, what matters the most in fundraising is growth numbers combined with how sustainable and capital efficient that growth is. We did not find it easy to raise significant capital till the time we started growing fast with high gross margins and low cost of acquiring new customers. The other thing that matters a lot is the size of the market. Most funds have certain exit expectations and they'd rather invest in a high risk category where the market size is massive, rather than taking safer bets in smaller markets. And finally, another important criterion is the founder and the leadership team. Markets change and business models change, so investors look for teams that can adapt and create robust businesses in spite of these changes.

A. Beauty & makeup all started with homegrown practices, origins of which could be traced back to Ayurveda. Through the decades, this industry has been transformed by the waves of tech-induced changes brought about by the advent of international brands. Indian beauty & makeup practices are now at the cusp of tradition and innovation: while Indian women keep beauty habits such as hair oiling, ubtans and kajal as part of their everyday life, they also get inspired by influencers on Instagram to learn face contouring and highlighting.

A. Both actually. Being a woman allows me to relate better to our customers. Men sometimes find consumer behaviour like "buying makeup in the lockdown" hard to understand, but for women, these seemingly irrational behaviours make total sense. I also test our products all the time on myself and that makes it easier to predict how well it would do, although I do get it wrong at times! The slight disadvantage to this same point - of being a founder in a category where 99% of the customers are women is when fundraising with male VCs. It would have been easier if I were building a company that solves a problem that a male VC could quickly relate to.

1) MAC (Love their speed of innovation in spite of being around for so long)

1) Steve Jobs - I am one of the many entrepreneurs who had him as their first hero. I think he has had the greatest impact as a role model for young people with no financial backing dreaming of building large companies.

A. Passionate, Energetic, Emotional (these 3 mostly go together!)

1) Do an IPO