At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring some of the unique and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. This week we invited Naina Ruhail for an interview with us to know more about her inspiring journey, her background and her advice for aspiring individuals. Naina is the Founder Director at Vanity Wagon which is India’s first true information-oriented clean beauty marketplace. Focus on non-toxic products with a one-stop solution to all your beauty needs. Let’s learn more about her journey and get inspired.
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Naina:
Talk us through your background and your journey as a women entrepreneur, please;
I started my educational journey with Army Schools across the country, travelling from North East to South India, this gave me multiple opportunities to learn and grow in different cultures.
Picking up my learnings I went on to pursue a bachelors in computers and worked as an IT professional for 3 years. With my MBA in 2012, I took my first step in my entrepreneurial journey, understanding International business in-depth, following it up with a specialization in beauty from Delhi.
I started my own professional makeup studio and also started taking shoots and other makeup assignments.
Early on I knew beauty was my calling and learning the same professionally I honed my skills more at London School of makeup. Entrepreneurship, according to me, involves a lot of small steps before making the big leap. Coming back to India in 2017, I started working on my vision of India’s largest clean beauty market and this came to life in 2018 in the form of Vanity Wagon.
The vision with Vanity Wagon is in line with what I had conceptualized right from 2015 and I have added my learnings thereon to build what today is definitely a large player in the clean beauty space in India.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
I believe everyone has a calling, and you could very well build an outstanding professional journey in the corporate world, but I have always been independent and a leadership bent in my thinking.
This led me to carve my own way, while a lot of my colleagues and professional friends were making it big in the corporate and entertainment space. The pleasure of being able to build something from scratch and call it your own gives me immense pleasure and self-satisfaction.
Another advantage with being an entrepreneur is you get to learn multiple facets of an organization and industry – finance, marketing, sales, brand building, content etc, which is a much larger gain than what one would usually learn in a vertical career.
I have an entrepreneur within me and I would keep pushing myself to achieve what I perceive.
‘Vanity Wagon’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving?
The backstory behind the brand name is also hidden in the name itself. So my initial pilot was to build India’s largest clean beauty market on wheels. We would be an travel centric company (similar to a food-truck) and hop from place to place in India thereby giving access to everyone to all the products they otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to know more about and try.
But soon enough I realized that the same can be achieved much faster and with better economies of scale – online. The name “Vanity Wagon” has a ring in it and also is very positive, symbolizing our reach (Wagon) and also a woman’s “Vanity”, hence decided to continue with that name and got a trademark done early on.
India has a large consumption of beauty products, but not everyone wonders or thinks what they are putting on their body. If healthy eating is important then healthy beauty consumption is also important. This is the base behind Vanity Wagon.
Further, there are plenty of amazing clean beauty brands that were either operational or developing in 2018, I wanted to build a market –
(1) For them to reach the right audience
(2) For the Indian consumers to seamlessly shop and learn about clean beauty. I am happy with the progress we have shown and the brands we have built in the last 3 years.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
(a) Lean Operations – A good pivot that has helped us sail the pandemic with less burn is the way we operate at Vanity Wagon. We are a lean team that operates on strict budgets and ensures that our efforts are directed towards sustainable growth. Further, our team is horizontal thereby creating a cohesive and a collaborative approach at work which further leads to less autonomy and collective decision making.
(b) Data-driven approach – Data has been consumed much more during the pandemic than ever before, mostly due to lives being ruled by a digital world. With that in mind, we have been focused on creating intelligent and interesting data that enables our users and customers to evolve with us on this journey of clean beauty. Further information has always been at the centre of Vanity Wagon and this helped us connect with our customers more during the pandemic.
(c) Team motivation – Mental health is a serious issue and a lack of human interpersonal interactions has aggravated this. I have always believed that a motivated team is the key to a successful enterprise. Hence, right from team activities to periodic founder calls with the team, we focused on understanding every individual’s concern all throughout the pandemic and even after and this has definitely helped us build one of the highest performing teams in our space.
(d) Brand Building – The pandemic was a time to not sell or just gain customers but to also build Vanity Wagon as a brand. We constantly focused on helping our users understand the values we stand for and that has automatically helped us gain loyal customers with our retention rates touching as high as 48% month by month.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Self-belief – growth in knowledge – balanced work life. These three key tenets allow me to keep going and work through every challenge that comes my way. Throughout my journey with Vanity and before I have worked hard to grow my knowledge spectrum and this allows me to have a bag full of solutions for most issues that come my way.
Further, balancing your life – personal and professional is very important in today’s fast-paced and competitive world. This allows my mind to relax and prepare for the road ahead.
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
My biggest source of motivation is the need to do better for my family. I have been lucky when it comes to family, with my parents supporting my every decision and then Prateek, my husband, standing by my side and giving it his all for even Vanity Wagon.
Everyone can realize their dream with the right support system and I have always had that. Going beyond I want to build the same for my daughter, Inarah and that drives me every day to do better than yesterday.
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
Some of the key actions that have helped me grow as a person would definitively include:
(i) My constant endeavour to learn – since early days I was always keen to learn and this has shaped the “me” of today.
(ii) Keeping healthy – a healthy body has a healthy mind, I have been into fitness for over 15 years now and for me, it’s beyond being fit, it’s also about relaxing my mind and increasing my focus.
(iii) Self discipline – focusing on the task at hand and seeing it through has increased my performance as a professional and this, in turn, has increased my confidence as a person much fold.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
Like mentioned above, family is a great motivator for me. Beyond this, I love to read, with self-help books taking up the larger part of my shelves. These books enable me to see beyond the present and work towards becoming better.
Positivity in my life also comes from following my passion – beauty. I have worked hard to attain knowledge and understanding of this space and practising my skin care routines to learn about new products and ingredients also keep me motivated to do better with Vanity Wagon and beyond.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
Some of the keys to success, in my view, are:
> Self Belief
> Hard work
> Growth in Intellect and Knowledge sharing
> Working with the right team
> Balancing your work-personal life balance
> Keeping a positive attitude
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
My advice to everyone out there is to spend time with themselves in figuring out what career/profession gives them a sense of belonging and also comforts their mind.
If you pursue a journey that allows you to get up every morning with content then half the battle is won. Further, you should always endeavour to learn and work towards understanding every aspect that affects your performance – directly or indirectly.
For instance, if you are a social media expert then you should also understand how content generation and user acquisition work, only then you would excel in the social media space.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
