Her First Attempt Flopped. 6 Years Later, Her Biz is Landing at Sephora

Rooshy Roy was in business school when she had the idea for a modern Ayurvedic beauty brand. She teamed up with another student, transferred the money they both had saved for college into a business account, and got to work. Six year later, that beauty brand is called AAVRANI and it’s landing in Sephora! Even though her first version of the brand didn’t hit, she pivoted and went on to create a company that’s raised $7 million and is collaborating with Lilly Singh.

Instead of taking a summer internship, Rooshy and her cofounder built AAVRANI’s first product line and Shopify store. And then... not much happened. Rooshy says she then realized the packaging was all wrong:

“As I found myself going to trade shows, having interviews, trying to hire, I myself felt very disconnected from what I was holding up and presenting as my brand.”

Rooshy couldn’t afford an agency, so she did the rebrand herself. Rooshy is not a graphic designer, besties, so it took a year using tools like Canva and PowerPoint. She shared the process on Instagram to build community along the way.

After the rebrand in 2020 things seemed to click. AAVRANI grew 400% and made their first million in sales. The next year, Rooshy raised $2M from investors to keep growing the brand.

“That's when suddenly conversations with investors got a lot easier than it was before. It felt like that first million was certainly a benchmark in their eyes.”

Community-led marketing is what’s driving a lot of AAVRANI’s growth. Here’s a tactic that worked recently: Rooshy wanted to capture more user generated content, and so held a UGC event IRL. They announced the event on Instagram and had 7,000+ applications! AAVRANI set up cute photo opportunities with great lighting, then let the community enjoy AAVRANI products and capture great content at the same time. Smart!

In 2022 AAVRANI raised another $7 million from investors. Rooshy says that she needed to show consistent sales growth to land the investment, and that larger industry trends that aligned with her business also helped, like a shift towards nontoxic formulas and a wellness approach to beauty.

Next up, AAVRANI’s launching a hair care line in collaboration with mega-influencer Lilly Singh—and it’s landing at Sephora!