Bengaluru-based Honestly, an innovative AI-powered beauty and personal care platform, last week secured INR 3.2 crore in its pre-seed funding round led by Better Capital, with participation from QED Innovations – led by Cred founder Kunal Shah, and senior leaders from Flipkart, Polygon, and Cred.
According to the company, the funds will be utilized to drive the successful launch of Honestly’s initial product offering and achieve significant milestones in product-market fit.
Founded earlier this year by Karishma Rathaur and Vivek Madani, Honestly enables users to connect with peers and exchange authentic product reviews. The platform’s AI technology ensures personalized recommendations, making it a unique player in the beauty and personal care industry.
Speaking of the funding round, Vivek Madani said,
“We are looking at BPC because the problem is grave here. You can’t return products, and the number of attributes along which you need to know whether the product is working or not, and how a person experiences a product, is very different,” said Madani to Economic Times
“While social media has helped educate people about skincare, haircare and makeup, it has also added to the confusion. We’re thrilled to be backed by investors who understand the problem. This investment will enable us to build a strong engineering and marketing founding team over the next few months,” said Rathaur.
Honestly’s revenue model is focused on business-to-business (B2B) transactions, allowing other brands to leverage the platform’s APIs and integrate widgets into their product pages. The company aims to reach 1 million users in India in the next few years, solidifying its position in the market.
“Once we prove out the business-to-consumer (B2C) user application and we have enough proprietary data then we will give ecommerce platforms APIs to integrate onto their platforms,” said Madani
Speaking of expansion plans beyond India, Madani shared about UAE and UK markets,
“We will either look to go deeper into India or expand globally. For example, the UAE has similar skin tones, and then there is the West Indian diaspora and the UK Indian diaspora,” Madani added.
Speaking of the investment in Honestly, Vaibhav Domkundwar, CEO of Better Capital in a statement said,
“A quick skim on beauty Reddits confirms how broken skin care is today, and especially when more and more consumers are proactively looking to take care of their skin.”
