Kayos: Re-modelling the realm of personal care with mindful strategies & products

Advancing in the domain of skincare, haircare, body care, and in fact all that which comes under personal care requires a lot of research and in-depth knowledge of the field. Keeping in mind all this, Kayos, a skincare brand has been effectively scouting this realm with new strategies coming up each day to resolve niche and targeted problems that the consumers face in their daily lives. Giving an insight into how it is to work in this field, Rajat Dua, the CEO and founder of Kayos has shared the intricacies of the thriving business.

 

1. When was Kayos launched and what inspired you to start the brand?

Kayos was launched in 2017 to rev the global personal care market and meet the ever-changing expectations of the people. I stepped into the industry with a dream to launch my own venture and make it big as it made significant strides in the sector. This inspired me to incept Kayos and our team researched its way to the top to make our brand stand out amongst many. We observed manufacturers who were exporting quality products to the international market but not to India. This encouraged us to plan our next move and utilize the untapped potential in this sector.

2. What are the problems you are trying to solve through your platform?

We are endeavoring to resolve niche and targeted problems that our consumers face in their daily lives. It gives us immense satisfaction to bring a product for our Indian consumers that adds value to their daily life; for instance, a product for Keto Diet Routine or a step-by-step solution to a girl's curly-hair routine.

3. How is the journey of Kayos so far from the launch year till now? What are the key milestones in your journey?

Akin to other businesses, we have had our own set of teething challenges. We started our professional expedition in the market in 2017 and were welcomed warmly by the online audience. However, the focus was diverged to several categories, making it a little complex for the brand to grow. With FY 2019-2020 being a year of most sales, we were looking forward to an expansive response but the onset of COVID changed everything. It made us halt our operations during the lockdown and face challenges in manufacturing throughout the year. We made our way through the rough times and even after all the odds, managed to reach the same level of gross sales post-COVID. We have been garnering immense traction ever since and now plan to expand our footprint and scale the brand to new horizons of growth.

4. How online selling is playing an important role in boosting your business? How many products and product categories do you offer?

D2C (Direct to consumer) is an upcoming business model that helps many entrepreneurs like us. We started slowly with no outside investment at all and are still bootstrapped, but this online channel gives us some great advantages over traditional retail business:

1) It helps us expand our reach and reach a customer even in the remotest part of India with minimal investment.

2) It helps us to test new product ideas quickly: we develop a new idea, get the product manufactured in a small batch and quickly see analytics to understand how it is doing.

3) We have a lot of customer data to improve upon our products: The reviews, search terms, analytics and more helps us to understand what customers are looking for as compared to traditional retailers.

4) In this new world everyone understands the need to go digital. Sporadic COVID lockdowns are here to stay with new variants coming every season. In this scenario, the online business model will get an advantage over traditional retail.

Kayos sells anywhere around 40 odd products in categories like Health & Personal Care, Beauty and Wellness.

5. How were the sales in the past year during the pandemic? What kind of impact did you see?

It was a complete roller coaster ride during the pandemic. We had to shut business 2-3 months during the first wave and then slowly pick up the pace. Throughout the year we kept facing manufacturing issues. However, even after all these issues, the customer purchase sentiment towards health products was so high that we managed to touch pre-coved year sales. As of data global logistics cost has increased many folds so all ingredients which are imported in India have become expensive. So we expect prices for these health products to jump in the coming year.

6. What expansion plans do you have for the next 1-2 years?

We have launched 5 new products in the last four months and are preparing to launch another 5 before the end of this financial year (2021-2022). We have also partnered with 7 new platforms this year where our products are being sold. We have also set up a new marketing team in the last quarter. We have been on a spending spree this season however, we still haven't taken any funding as of yet. We are looking for investors but we haven't found the right investor for the same. Kayos needs investments to grow in size. I can sense it is the right time we invest funds into our business because anyone who encashes this post-COVID sentiment will ride this wave for a very long time to come. I am investing my savings into this business right now until we find a like-minded investor.