She resigned from a prestigious job in New York to come back to India and build a brand of her own. TheGlitz ‘Super Woman’ – Aakriti Suri is the Founder and CEO of Happier Skincare. However, before establishing her own skincare line, Aakriti commenced a Sanitary pads business to create awareness about menstrual hygiene and proper usage of sanitary products. After spreading awareness about menstrual hygiene, Aakriti then embarked on an entrepreneurial journey to spread awareness about holistic beauty.
Happier Skincare came into being and it became the top preference for clean beauty enthusiasts by delivering highly efficacious products that simultaneously garner happiness for the skin and soul. In fact, she also introduced braille-friendly packaging for the ease of visually impaired people. No wonder, Happier skincare has established itself in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, making Happier skincare available globally.
So why is Aakriti Suri TheGlitz ‘Super Woman’? …because Aakriti isn’t just any other entrepreneur, she’s also a socially aware young woman whose perspective goes beyond skincare. Read on…
Your journey has had many momentous milestones.
Long before I launched my skincare brand, I had a feminine hygiene venture called Pankh that I started in my hometown Parwanoo, Himachal Pradesh, aimed at providing affordable sanitary napkins in the region. As a young adolescent girl, I noticed a gap between the lack of menstrual hygiene and the lack of access to safe, affordable sanitary products in my small town which led local women to resort to old cloth and rags as alternatives.
Additionally, a lot of girls my age were dropping out of school at the onset of menstruation. To solve this problem, I set up Pankh to manufacture affordable, safe cotton sanitary napkins and employed local women to work on this project. Quickly I realized the problem was deeper – menstruation was stigmatized which led to a lack of awareness about feminine hygiene and diseases that could stem from a lack of proper use of sanitary napkins.
To eradicate this problem, I started conducting educational workshops in local schools and community centers to break the stigma associated with menstruation. I believe this initiative has helped to create a positive impact on the women living in the small town and received a favourable reception from the community.
After this, I went to New York for my undergraduate degree and started working as an investment banker in the city soon after. During the pandemic, I had a burning desire to return to my roots and embark on another venture that empowers women. I have always had a deep passion for skincare and even started a blog to spread awareness about self-care and self-love. With a leap of faith, I moved back to India at the end of 2021 to launch HAPPIER SKINCARE, a holistic, clean and intentional skincare brand to help women look and feel their best selves.
As unpalatable as it is, societal norms have always conditioned people, particularly the feminine gender, to strive for perfect-looking skin according to the set standards. I believe that skincare rituals are a form of self-care that empowers women to feel confident in their own skin, regardless of the societal pressures of having to look a certain way.
Women are embracing their inherent beauty as a result of this newfound focus on holistic beauty. In light of this, Happier Skincare aims to become the top preference for clean beauty enthusiasts and create a community of happy self-care lovers in India and overseas by delivering highly efficacious products that simultaneously garner happiness for the skin and soul.
Could you tell TheGlitzMedia about your life-changing journey that has moulded you to be what you are today?
Choosing to leave a prestigious, stable and lucrative finance career and my friends, my community and my favorite city behind to bring Happier to life has been a tough and monumental decision in my life. It has taught me to listen to my heart and intuition and have faith in my dreams. I have always been a risk-averse person who shied away from the road less taken.
I had drawn a 10-year career and life plan for myself in New York and choosing to deviate from it was very uncomfortable at first and brought a lot of nervousness and anxiety in my life initially. But choosing to listen to my inner voice that was screaming to follow my passion and goal of providing a medium to empower women helped overcome moments of doubt and has fundamentally changed me as a person. Ever since I have learned to trust goals that are in full alignment with my true self and my values.
Could you list 3 of your major achievements?
Happier Skincare was founded in 2022 so our journey is still nascent and our achievements modest so far. One of our goals was to make Happier a global brand from the …get go. We were able to successfully achieve this when we launched in the Middle East within the first few months of launch. Our second achievement was achieving Amazon’s Choice status for a couple of our products within the first 6 months of launch and selling out those SKUs completely within a couple of months.
This achievement was small but made us proud that the products are well-liked. Our third achievement has been creating a vibrant community of skincare enthusiasts on our social media channel that share the same values as ours and believe in the power of self-love and self-care. We believe the end consumer makes a brand and winning the trust of people might be an intangible achievement but it is priceless and extremely special for us.
What are the setbacks you have faced? How did you tackle these setbacks or challenges?
I faced several challenges during the inception of Happier and the biggest one was the impact of COVID on our supply chain. With every wave of the pandemic, the timelines and my nervousness around the launch grew further. The high level of uncertainty and loss of lives all around almost made me want to drop the idea of Happier.
The paramount aim of Happier from the beginning was to spread happiness in people’s lives and after deep reflection, I realized that self-care is even more essential during times of uncertainty and gloominess. Another setback that we faced was difficulty with sourcing and manufacturing. We met a lot of third-party manufacturers and started the process with a couple only to realize that they do not meet our ethical and quality standards.
After several failed attempts, we finally met a team that understood our vision and was willing to support us in bringing it to life. The moral of the story – is never settle for subpar quality even if it leads to delays and failed attempts. My goal has always been to provide accessible, efficacious and clean products to people and sticking to this mission has helped me overcome the setbacks.
…And what lesson have you learned from it?
Through all the setbacks so far, the biggest lesson I have learned is to have faith and trust the universe as long as your intentions and actions are right and aligned with your true self.
When you look back, what are the three qualities in you that have helped you become what you are today?
I believe entrepreneurship requires a huge amount of persistence, patience and passion. Being an entrepreneur, things don’t always go your way, hard work takes time to reap results and setbacks come your way every now and then. Persistence, patience and passion help me materialize my goals and achieve milestones.
