Kulfi Beauty's Next Big Moment Is Here
When Priyanka Ganjoo launched Kulfi Beauty in February 2021, the brand offered only one item: kajal in a classic, onyx hue. It's a type of eyeliner traditional to South Asian culture that's often made at home, per Ganjoo. In the three years since, Kulfi has expanded to offer blush, lipstick, brow and concealer products. Plus, it just rolled out in-store at all of Sephora's North American locations.
The initial idea for Kulfi came about when Ganjoo left her executive job at Ipsy in 2019 with the aspiration to create her own thing. It "started with this vision of seeing a space for more joy in color, as the central thesis, and seeing more South Asian representation in beauty," Ganjoo, who is of South Asian descent, tells Fashionista. Even the name Kulfi has a sense of joy embedded within: It's a traditional Indian ice cream that reminds Ganjoo of her "most fun moments growing up in childhood, eating Kulfi on a hot summer day in Delhi."
The brand's trajectory is one for the books, both for its quick rise and unique story. Ganjoo, who is now in her mid-30s, didn't start wearing makeup until recently.
"I never felt like I was one of the pretty girls who would look good in makeup. It was only in my late 20s when I actually started working in the beauty industry and started playing around with makeup on my own that I discovered… it's just fun. It's a way to express yourself. That a-ha moment was something that I wanted to capture in a brand," she tells Fashionista. Kulfi is also like a love letter to Ganjoo's younger self who didn't think makeup was for her.
Before developing any products, Ganjoo started a blog, Kulfi Bites, in 2020. Later that year, with only lab samples on hand, she applied and was accepted into Sephora's Accelerate program – an incubator that's been around since 2016 but recently revamped efforts to focus on founders of color. The experience gave the nascent brand a boost, not only from more access to resources and a direct connection to a retail partner, but also in providing a founder network and community that became critical for her continued success. Her "classmates" include entrepreneurs behind Eadem, Topicals and Hyper Skin.
Photo: Courtesy of Kulfi Beauty
"It built this community that I could reach out to and discuss and pick their brains," she says, including asking "everything from 'who are you using for photography' to 'how much does this cost?' All of that stuff was really helpful."
Her first product concept was inspired by conversations – including with strangers on Facebook for "customer research" – that made Ganjoo realize that people who were using kajal didn't necessarily "find joy in it." Ganjoo says she set out to modernize it with "a formula that gives sultry siren eyes or a casual look, but without the messiness and the smudging off, which traditional kajal may do." Kulfi differentiates its kajal with a smoother application: it glides on, stays blendable for about 20 seconds and then sets.
The brand debuted in 2021 with a direct-to-consumer model, and the product was a hit. This helped it land a spot on Sephora.com's digital shelves by August 2022. "It took us some time to get ready for that retail launch because [Sephora] is one of the most expansive retail chains in the world and in the U.S.," Ganjoo says of her "dream retailer." Coinciding with the Sephora.com debut, Kulfi debuted its second product, a concealer, which went viral on TikTok a few weeks later and sold out. Handling that torrent of orders took "a little bit of firefighting," but "sometimes you need that validation," she admits.
"We ran into some challenges there because we had too little inventory," Ganjoo tells Fashionista. A merchant on the Sephora team can walk brand owners through forecasts for how much they will sell, but if the TikTok algorithm catches something, that projection might as well go out of the window. "We just kind of didn't imagine the scale that Sephora operates at," she reflects. "That made us grow up really quickly in terms of being ready operationally." Keeping true to the founder's motto of finding "joy in color," the brand has since debuted kajal in new hues like terracotta, teal, plum and more.
Kulfi's success can't be attributed only to product formulation. A big part also comes from its ability to listen and cater to its community. Beyond a savvy social media team that keeps TikTok videos on-trend, Ganjoo also leans heavily on feedback shared online. "Even the models we choose for campaigns are so integrated with the community," she says, referencing the concealer campaign that developed out of a TikTok-based casting call. Going "from being excluded in the beauty conversation to then seeing yourself as the face of a brand, and in Sephora, is a special moment."
"Growing that [community] slowly and intentionally has been part of the recipe of our success. Had we, on day one, just launched with a bunch of products that I thought people needed, I don't think that would resonate as much as listening to the community. And that's what's really at the center of the brand."
Photo: Courtesy of Kulfi Beauty
Photo: Courtesy of Kulfi Beauty
The intra-continental Sephora rollout marks Kulfi's next big moment. The brand was already in about half of its retail stores, which helped ease the transition from online-only to brick-and-mortar. "Launching online only also gave us the flexibility to test and learn. Once you're in-store, it's a lot harder to move quickly because stores have a huge footprint and changing that is harder," Ganjoo says.
A physical store of Kulfi's own would be a dream come true, but that's "a little bit further down the road," per the founder. Her focus right now is on new products, like the recently launched Lassi Lips oil, with the goal of "reimagining the makeup aisle by making it more playful and making it more inclusive." She's starting to think about going into international markets, too.
Her advice to other early-stage beauty founders lies in believing in your own ideas: "Recognize that you have a superpower in your own story and that what you're building is going to be unique because you are at the heart of it. You will attract the people who will love it. There are always going to be naysayers, but be able to filter that out," Ganjoo tells Fashionista, recalling times when she was questioned or told her brand wasn't "aspirational" in its early days.
"All of us have something special," she says. "Channel that, focus on that vision and filter out all the people who will say, 'no.'"
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