Perfect Marriage of Bollywood & Startups: A Golden Era of Innovation & Evolution

Brand Name: Kay Beauty

Founder: Katrina Kaif

Industry: Personal Care Products

The make-up and cosmetics brand is the first to offer multi category make up products. The company claims that, all the products produced are vegan, cruelty free, and paraben free. They offer a large variety of make-up products such as hydrating foundation, lip tints, lip liners, lipsticks, eye-shadows, eyeliners, eyebrow pencils, and so on. The Bollywood actress forayed into the startup industry with wide range of beauty and cosmetics products in 2019. The company assists the organizations which work for the upliftment of the rural women by providing them required fund.

In 2018, D2C fashion and cosmetics platform Nykaa owned 51 percent stake of the company and after that, Kay beauty became the in house brand of the platform. Till now, the company has not yet risen any funding, but sources say that, during 2020, Kay beauty infused an undisclosed amount from Falguni Nayar of Nykaa and strategic partnership was signed between the parties.

“More than just a brand, I wanted it to be a community for women, who would feel completely okay to be themselves -which is also our tagline ‘It’s Kay to Be You’,” shares Katrina Kaif

Brand Name: Explurger

Founder: Sonu Sood

Industry: Social Media Platform

Sonu Sood is a very well-known face of Bollywood who stole the limelight since the COVID period where he unveiled his philanthropic side. Since then, he has been holding the focus of media by his different shades of character and one of those is entrepreneurship. To help the migrant workers of India he started a job portal called Pravasi Rojgar in July 2020, in collaboration with Schoolnet India. Not only the startup helped them to search jobs, but it trained them to get better career opportunities in future. The startup successfully lifted Rs.250 crore from Temasek Holding-backed Goodworker.

After the boundless success of Pravasi Rojgar, Sonu Sood launched his new AI-based social media app Explurger. This platform comes under the category of freemium apps where the users can interact with their closed and dear ones. It is a travel focused social media platform which creates customized travelogue for its users. This startup was founded by Sonu Sood and Jitin Bhatia in 2021. The app recently has raised $4.5 million or Rs.37.3 crore in its series A round of funding from Affle. With this funding Affle will enjoy 9.03 percent of stake in the company.

Apart from being an entrepreneur, he is also an investor, having his own investing agency Sood Informatics LLP. He invested in rural fintech firm Spice money and purchased shares worth Rs.8.69 Lakh at a price of Rs. 10 per share.

“We have been working on this from last 2.5 years. When Jitin told me about the app, I wanted to create something that gives back to the online community. With this made-in-India app I want to give back something to people”, adds Sonu Sood