This woman entrepreneur left MNC job to build science-based skincare brand

Malini Adapureddy's motivation to create skincare brand Deconstruct was fuelled by the ambiguous marketing manners of most skincare products that were being sold in India. Unhappy with such products in the Indian market she left her high paying MNC job to start Deconstruct a science-based skincare brand that focuses on educating consumers and bringing transparency in the skincare system. Malini Adapureddy, Founder and CEO, Deconstruct in an exclusive interview with Bizz Buzz says, "The Indian market is still at a nascent stage, with immense potential for innovation and growth."

Please elaborate on the opportunities that lie ahead in the D2C category and specifically in the skincare industry.

The per capita spending on beauty and skincare in India is less compared with a similar per capita market like Indonesia. India spends around $2 per capita on skincare/personal care products whereas Indonesia spends about four times more.

The Indian market is at a nascent stage, with immense potential for innovation and growth. Consumers are moving ahead with pace, creating latent demand in the market for appropriate skincare products. The demand for these products are mostly being met by importing or substituting them with international products that are not always suited for Indian skin.

In China, about 50 per cent of the contribution in the beauty and personal care category comes from skincare, followed by Indonesia at 25 per cent, while India only spends 12 per cent on skincare products, inclined more toward oral care, body care, and haircare, creating a massive opportunity.

Please share a brief about Deconstruct and yourself. What exactly is the brand all about, how did you start and so on.

I was born and raised at Visakhapatnam. I come from a family of doctors and closely observed my mother manage multiple aspects, both at her hospital and at home with ease. She was the first to instil the roots of entrepreneurship in me, being an entrepreneur herself by starting her own hospital at the age of 22. She also inspired me with stories of marquee business, women and women leaders around the world and this created an aspiration of entrepreneurship right from a young age.

I completed my engineering from IIT Kharagpur and pursued my MBA from INSEAD. I worked in the FMCG and CPG industries for almost a decade before starting Deconstruct. I started off my career with FlipKart and then worked with Proctor and Gamble, followed by Kraft-Heinz, before beginning my entrepreneurial journey.

Deconstruct is primarily a science-based skincare brand that focuses on educating consumers and bringing transparency in the skincare system. It can also be called a treatment-based brand since the objective is to help consumers with various skin concerns. Our current focus is on facial skincare products, including face serums, face washes, and moisturizers. We have 14 unique formulations addressing specific skin concerns. Our products went live for the first time in February 2021 after a thorough R&D of 6-18 months and we follow the same for all our products. Very recently we have also launched a range of body care products.

At Deconstruct we provide evidence for every claim we make, including the ingredients we use, how we use them, the technology behind it etc. The idea behind science and evidence-based products was simple- science can be proven. The value proposition we follow at Deconstruct is 'information over impulse,' which is also the motto of the brand.

Currently we are an online enterprise available on more than 15 platforms, including leading e-commerce platforms such as Myntra, FlipKart, Nykaa, Amazon, Purple and more. We also sell through our own website. Our team consists of professionals from diverse domains, such as research, engineering, marketing and operations and 70 per cent of the team members are women, just like our consumers. All of us internally try out each and every product before it hits the market.

What led you to start Deconstruct? What was your inspiration behind the idea?

A mix of both business and personal insight led to the birth of Deconstruct. My personal motivation to create skincare products was fuelled by the ambiguous marketing manners of most skincare products that were being sold in the country. As a consumer of such products in the Indian market, I wasn't happy with the results. There was no change in my skin due to the lack of innovation in the products or the industry at large. I always felt that the way skincare products were being sold in the Indian market was very archaic and biased. If you notice, in the Indian market there are no ingredients in products that target specific skin concerns, whereas in most countries the products work wonders.

The second interesting thing I noticed was that the Indian skincare market was flooded with the concept of natural and ayurvedic skincare products. Most products were being sold with assumptions, without the logic being told about the ingredients and chemical compositions. The consumers were made to believe that everything natural is good. These two reasons inspired me to come up with Deconstruct. As a consumer of science-based/chemical-based products myself, I realised there was a dearth of science-based products, and no innovation had taken place in this regard.

As I understood the massive opportunity that lay ahead in the ecosystem, I undertook primary research and spoke to over 500-600 women on products they would like to have in the market in the personal care and beauty space, their preference of the skincare product branding, and the preferred product category. About 3-4 months were invested in the ideation stage itself to come up with an evidence-based skin care product brand.

This strong personal reason, coupled with business viability is what made me start Deconstruct. At Deconstruct, the primary aim of the brand is to create simple & efficacious products that work on skin concerns! Along with it, our marketing strategy is 'information over impulse' - to provide all the information about the products to the consumer & let them make the decisions. We want to fight the age old 'fairytale marketing' that is prevalent in the market today.

Personal Inspiration: In most of the paths I have chosen in life, I was in the minority. Even in IIT, it was 700 men and 45 women, but that did not stop me, and it has given me a more well-rounded approach as to how to tread the right path. Even today, I am one of the few female founders and also a single founder. I think all those values from my childhood have come to use for me. It's about that great determination and identifying what to do right in a given situation, being smart and emotionally aware has also helped me. There are multiple challenges being a woman founder because the market is not as open. Of course, its opening up, but we need to support more women founders and I would like to see more inspirational women to come through it. I hope one day I can be there to motivate a young girl, like Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw or Barkha Dutt had motivated me to come here.

What are some of your business milestones? Growth so far, how has the journey been for the company and you in terms of business revenue and overall growth?

I think we've been doing phenomenally well since the very beginning, witnessing a 25-30 per cent steady month-on-month growth and our annualised run rate (ARR) is currently at $2 million. We have 50 per cent repeat rates, which is very rare in an industry like ours because most customers switch brands easily, thanks to the superior and innovative products we try to bring into the market. We have grown mainly due to the word-of-mouth publicity from our most loyal consumers.

Another interesting observation I would like to bring into your notice is, 35 per cent of our products are sold in top metro cities, and the remaining 65 per cent of the products are purchased in the rest of India. If you look at Jammu & Kashmir and the Northeast, they contribute to around 12 per cent of the orders on the website. These States if you see are the most difficult ones to reach for any business and therefore this is a proof of our success. We have strong hold in tier-2 and tier-3 cities where most of the traction on the website comes from, such as, Kochi, Mysore and Jaipur.

What is next? Way forward for the company, future plans etc.

We are planning to expand to new geographies overseas and very recently launched a range of body care products. We aim to take our brand and products to neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Gulf countries. We are getting a lot of product queries from these regions. We also aim to expand our team in the near future. Currently we are a team of 20-25 people, we plan to become a team of more than 40 in the next 3-4 months.

We are also in talks to raise second round of funds in this fiscal year. Earlier in July 2021, we raised a total of $4,00,000 from Bee Next Ventures backed by Marquee Angels and investors such as Binny Bansal.