Even with the ongoing digital revolution in India touching every aspect of people’s life, beauty and wellness sector has somewhat lagged behind in the race of exploiting the on demand market place.
With an estimated market of around 5 Billion $ in India, it is predominantly the ‘Indian way’ of recommendation that works here. So if you want to go to a Gym or need a makeup artist, you probably take suggestions from your friends and based on their recommendations you make the final call.
The Makeoverz, which is a Gurgaon based Startup, provides online directory to the Salons, Spas, Makeup Artists, Skin Centers, Gyms, Fitness Studios and Personal Trainers & Dieticians in the Delhi NCR region. Though there is a plethora of online directories having contact details and other basic information of Spas and Gyms, a comprehensive database containing various other details was missing.
The Makeoverz was launched in 2014 by Kamal Gulati. Currently the venture is bootstrapped. Initially Kamal worked part time on this project but from January 2015, he pursued this venture full time. TOS interviewed Kamal Gulati to understand more about wellness sector and his venture- The Makeoverz.
TOS : How did the Idea of The Makeoverz come into your mind?
Kamal :It was about November 2013, when I thought about Zomato and its success. How the company reached the heights by providing the pictures and menu of the food outlets around us.
Beauty & Fitness was the industry which lacked information. So it struck me that how convenient it would be for people if somebody could just provide the information like Rate List & Pictures about Salon, Spa & Gym. I talked to some of my friends and they told me that a portal like this should exist. So, I visited a couple of salons with a friend and told them that we need information about their salon to list them on our website. They got excited and told us that they want to get featured. That research was enough for me to work on it.
TOS : What were the initial challenges that you faced as an entrepreneur and how did you overcome them?
Kamal : It was very challenging. Full of ups and downs. Collecting Data was a very tough task to start with. I hired interns for data collection but it didn’t work out like it was supposed to. I had to outsource it to a company which helped me in collecting the data. I worked alone, day and night, to upload data on my website. Around October and November of 2014, other companies started getting funding. That was the time I got to know about funding of websites. There was no scope of going down any further so I had to get up, dust myself off and rise. I made this part time work, my full time job in January 2015. I worked on it, created a team which could make my dream as theirs and prove every body. We face a new challenge almost everyday but these things make us even more stronger. We are up for everything.
TOS : The Idea of providing an online repository of almost every thing is gaining currency nowadays . How do you differentiate yourself from your domain competitors?
Kamal : Our USP is, we provide Contact Information, pictures, rate Lists, Offers & Reviews. We have more than 2100 Vendors Listed on our Website. We have 7 categories for Beauty and Fitness. No other website offers both the categories. We sell offers of Salon, Spa & Makeup Artists and we also customize Beauty Deals for our Clients like say if a girl is looking for Hair Rebonding so we will give her the price on the basis of her hair Length & Density and not just a deal even if her hair length is short. The Makeoverz is basically an all in one website where we provide our users with all the required information
According to Kamal, The Makeoverz is growing by around 20 % every month. His company has also started offering customized Makeup deals based on users’ requirements. They are planning to provide customized deals for other categories soon. The Makeoverz is also planning to launch a Mobile App in the next 2 months.
Other Startups like Purplle, Ziffi, Stylofie,ManageMySpa,VanityCube also offers knowledge about beauty and wellness services across India. However, Kamal claims that the database of The Makeoverz is more comprehensive and provides information in almost all the categories in the wellness sector.
With FICCI’s prediction of further growth in the health and wellness sector, it would be interesting to see how various Startups operating in the same domain differentiate themselves.
