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The beauty industry has changed a lot in the last decades. Fair, white, and dusky complexion does not matter much now as they used to be the focus of the beauty industry in past. Healthy skin has taken over it. "Healthy Skin" has often been refered to now as "Happy Skin". To keep the skin healthy and happy, skincare is the ultimate solution.
Foxtale is a skincare brand that provides skin care products to make your skin happy at an affordable rate. It is a woman-led startup that was started with the knowledge of the skin types of thousands of women and the challenges they face in their skincare routine. The startup is focused on making every women's skin healthy with products made with the safest and the most efficacious ingredients.
Read to know more about Foxtale, its founder, the idea of starting up, and more.
Foxtale - Company Highlights
- Startup Name-Foxtale
- Headquarters-Mumbai
- Industry -Beauty & Skincare
- Founder -Romita Mazumdar
- Founded -2021
- CEO-Romita Mazumdar
- Total Funding Raised-$4.7 million (June 2022)
- Website-foxtale.in
Foxtale - About
Foxtale is a cosmetics and skincare brand that is headquartered in Mumbai. Founded in 2021, Foxtale offers skincare products that are specifically formulated for the Indian skin type and Indian climate. The company wants to simply provide highly efficacious products that have the ability to bring each human 2 minutes of happiness, every day, without making a hole in their pockets or requiring them to have a 14-step skincare routine.
The products of Foxtale aim to score the highest in terms of efficacy and have claimed to launch the products only after 97% of its community approves of its efficacy. The four main products of Foxtale as of now are:
- Foxtale Vitamin C Serum
- Foxtale Zero White Cast Sunscreen
- Foxtale Smoothening Moisturiser
- Foxtale Hydrating Face Wash
The Foxtale products can also be filtered according to the skin types like:
- Oily Skin
- Dry Skin
- Sensitive Skin
- Combination Skin
Foxtale - Industry
The industry of Foxtale, which is the beauty and personal care space, is growing at an unprecedented rate and is expected to reach $28 bn by 2025. Here, the estimated number of online beauty shoppers would also be jumping to 122+ mn by FY2025, as per reports. The market opportunity for the D2C brands in the beauty and personal care space is pegged at around $5.6 bn by 2025.
Foxtale - Founder and Team
Romita Mazumdar
Romita Mazumdar is the founder and CEO Foxtale. She is an alumnus of the University of California, Los Angeles. Romita started her career with HDFC Finance as an intern. She then went on to serve in 4 companies including Bank of America, Provident Healthcare Partners, Harbor Ridge Capital, and more.
The company is clear with its hiring, which looks for a strong hustler and a great cultural fit! Foxtale believes that skills can be learned as long as someone shares the same values as they do. The company currently works with around 50 employees.
Foxtale - Startup Story and Idea
When Romita grew up, she saw her mother feeling guilty about taking time for herself, be it when she wanted to get a spa treatment or just spend some time by herself. Later in life, she realized in India self-care is a word tied to luxury, with the exorbitant price points defining the market. Very honestly, self-care is a right that every human has and something that all of us should practice. For Romita, her skincare routine has always been important and she knows that happens to be true for million other people. Foxtale is just trying to make that experience filled with happiness, accessibility, and fun. As a company, it believes that self-care is a right and not a privilege.
Romita wanted to understand what modern Indian women are looking for in skincare, and for her understanding, she claimed to have interviewed 3,000+ women.
Foxtale - Name, Tagline, and Logo
3 months later after Romita Mazumdar had made the decision of starting the skincare brand – she knew that the most critical part of it was to understand the consumers. So, she interviewed roughly 1000 women across India over a period of 3 months. Right after that, she was in Serai for New Year’s eve and was doing a coffee plantation tour. You couldn’t miss the coconut-like trees everywhere and when they asked about it, the guide had this to say - “This is the most useless plant called foxtail”. Something about that incident stuck with her and post the tour, she went and googled this up. The Foxtail tree is considered relatively useless because its seeds are inedible. However, it is planted in huge quantities because its roots are very strong and hold the soil together for the coffee plantation to thrive. This reminded her of her mother – she has never received any societal accolades like her father, her brother, and herself but she has been the real anchor that allows them to thrive! This holds true for all housewives and homemakers who never get the limelight but always make sure to provide an environment that facilitates growth for the rest of the family.
Additionally, she always thought of the fox as a cunning and competitive animal, but at the same time, she got to know that the fox is the most nurturing mother in the animal kingdom. This reminded her of the women like myself – who have always been compartmentalized. If you are smart then not pretty, if you are pretty then not smart; if you are ambitious then not a good mother and the list can go on. The fox beautifully encapsulated the many layers women can have and proudly own up to! Its name was first thought of as "foxtail".
However, one day when she had come back from her interviews with customers, she told her fiance that talking to women for 15 mins about their skin, would let the other person have an idea of how many kids they have, what kind of stress they go through in their day to day life, where they grew up, etc. This made her realise that every skin has its own story. This is what has become the tagline of the brand, while "tail" eventually changed to "tale", giving the startup name: FOXTALE!
Foxtale - Mission and Vision
Foxtale aims to "bridge the gap between efficacy and affordability, making skincare accessible to all," which can be read as the mission and vision statement of the Romita Mazumdar-led startup.
Foxtale - Business and Revenue Model
Foxtale is a D2C (direct to consumer) business that primarily operates around the same business model. Foxtale mainly earns from the product-related and delivery-related commissions of the products posted on its website/app.
Foxtale - Funding and Investors
Foxtale secured its Pre-Series A funding round on June 14, 2022. Coming onboard with this round, Matrix India is privileged it, as per its Managing Director, Rajat Agrawal's statements. Agrawal is confident with the Foxtale team because "they aim to disrupt this market through innovative products and differentiated go-to-market strategies,” added Rajat. The first funding round that Foxtale witnessed was a Seed funding round in August 2021.
The funding that Foxtale received in its Pre-Series A round of funding to expand its range of products, hire senior leaders and strengthen the leadership vertical and scale the business.
Foxtale - Growth
Foxtale has launched 4 basic products initially, which depicted a four-step skincare routine. It was since then that the startup claims to have found a product-market fit and boasts of witnessing a repeat rate of 50%.
Foxtale launched officially in December 2021. Till now, what has worked for the company the most is the word of mouth referral. The Foxtale products speak for themselves and the startup has mainly relied on the positive word that its customers have spread. Though Foxtale is a relatively new entrant in the beauty and skincare industry dominated by seasoned players like Nykaa, WOW Skin Science, Plum, Sugar Cosmetics and more, it still has a huge opportunity. What separates Foxtale is the high efficacy of the products it sells, which goes through vigorous testing. Besides, Foxtale sources 80% of its ingredients from premiere labs across the globe, said Kae Capital, Partner, Sunitha Viswanathan.
Foxtale - Challenges Faced
Building a business comes with a unique set of challenges every day. It would be difficult to talk about one in specific but she faced challenges as a woman. She has always been in male-dominated industries and never really thought that her journey was different from being a woman. That changed dramatically as she took up entrepreneurship. As a woman CEO, she often had to deal with skepticism - like is it just a hobby or is it a real business? What if you have kids, who will run the business then? Such patriarchial questions and people do cross paths but the only way she has dealt with it is to let her work speak. She, honestly, doesn’t believe that everything needs to be confronted with words. Actions do speak louder and she thinks Foxtale has proved that and continues to do so to the world.
Foxtale - Competitors
Foxtale is surrounded by reputed companies as competitors in the D2C beauty and skincare market. Some of the Foxtale competitors are:
- Nykaa
- Purplle
- Plum
- WOW Skin Science
- Mamaearth
- MyGlamm (The Good Glamm Group)
FAQs
When was Foxtale founded?
Foxtale was founded in 2021 in Mumbai.
Who is the founder of Foxtale?
Romita Mazumdar is the founder of Foxtale.
Who is the CEO of Foxtale?
Romita Mazumdar, the Founder of the company is the CEO of Foxtale.
Which are the top products of Foxtale?
Some of the top products of Foxtale are:
- Foxtale Vitamin C Serum
- Foxtale Zero White Cast Sunscreen
- Foxtale Smoothening Moisturiser
- Foxtale Hydrating Face Wash
Who are the Foxtale competitors?
Some of the Foxtale competitors are:
- Nykaa
- Plum
- Purplle
- The Good Glamm Group
- Mamaearth
- WOW Skin Science
