The story of Nishtha Malik’s entrepreneurial venture Beaux Hair is quite phenomenal. Nishtha took the pledge to start her own venture when she lost her mother at the age of 17. Her mother was a victim of cancer. Since then, she wanted to be an entrepreneur alongside helping society in the best possible way she could.
After completing her masters in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship from the University of Manchester, and working in London with an organic skincare brand for a while, Nishtha moved back to India and launched her venture in the personal and beauty care segment.
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| Nishtha Malik |
The genesis of Beaux Hair
With an aim to reveal a woman’s natural beauty and empower women around the world Nishtha launched her venture – Beaux Hair. “My family has always been supportive and is a pillar to me. Whatever I am today is because of my father and family who stood with me and have taken care of like a perfect mother. I am truly blessed to have a father and want to inspire everyone out there. My biggest goal and aim in life would be to make him proud someday with the contribution I am making as an entrepreneur and a social cause,” says Nishtha.
Beaux Hair is a premium quality 100% human hair extensions company.
“It’s a one-stop solution to all hair needs and problem, it can give length, volume, hide bald patches and everything as it’s a complete hair transformation hub,” she adds.
As a part of social initiative, she is also helping cancer patients worldwide with wigs as she lost her mother in the year 2014 due to cancer.
The Journey
Coming from a business family background, Nishtha started her entrepreneurial journey from scratch. She herself remains heavily involved with the business from product development to product sourcing and then marketing to customer service. She believes, customers will be happy if they get quality as well as affordability.
With her never say die attitude and hard-work, Beaux Hair has been making great progress in the industry. In less than a year of operation, the company is exporting products to over 18 countries and making thousands of customers happy.
“Beaux is the embodiment of every single lady in the world. We believe that everyone can and deserves to be beautiful. We like to call them Beaux beauty!” Nishtha adds. She is also a calligrapher and won international handwriting championships in the year 2012, 2013, and 2015.
Challenges Faced
Nishtha believes managing people is the most challenging job at work. “Work is work and of course has its own challenges but relatively way more controllable, predictable, and just easier vs. people. Hiring the right people, motivating them, building culture, keeping alignment, managing stakeholders, ensuring team morale, and performance all leads to company performance and each has its own challenges as we scale and grow. When you solve the ‘who’ problem you solve the ‘what’ problem so it’s crucial to have the right people in the right seats,” She says.
But she quickly remembers the rewarding and happy moments also. She adds, “Seeing the product in people’s hands and them loving it. My main passion point was to create a diverse, revolutionary, and inclusive multi-functional collection for all hair types and textures, genders, and age groups so when I see a diverse range of people using the product and experiencing the benefits, that is the greatest reward.”
The Hair Extensions Market
The hair extension business has snowballed into a huge business, with more people – men and women using the extensions to achieve styles that could not otherwise be done by the natural hair. However, asides from the fashionable use, there are practical uses for hair extensions such as protecting the natural hair from constant styling and harsh hair chemicals.
“The demand for hair extensions has increased especially as celebrities have now joined the target market. We are in the business of offering our various customers premium grade and luxury hair extensions. Our marketing and sales teams have perfected several penetration strategies aimed at getting new customers, whilst also ensuring that about 80% of loyal and old customers are retained and encouraged to refer more customers to us” Nishtha elaborates.
According to reports, the global hair wigs and extension market is estimated to reach revenues of more than $10 billion by 2023, growing at a CAGR of approximately 9% during 2018-2022.
The availability of high-quality wigs and toupees are encouraging consumers, both women and men across the world to try them as an alternative to surgical procedures for hair transplants. The global hair extensions market is expanding at an incredible rate due to the growing trend among consumers to imitate celebrity hairstyles.
“Our major clientele in India includes women and men aged above 40 who face major hair loss due to age, genetics and even the male pattern baldness is a major problem in India, women aged between 20-40 who needs customised hair extensions for their dream hair goals for more length, volume and color, and different looks, also cancer and alopecia patients who lose their hair due to their treatments.”
Road Ahead
Nishtha’s plan is to take the brand into many other countries and acquire more customers in the future. With her expansion plans in place, the venture is expected to make footprints in various other countries soon. “We have broken-up our market into sections which makes us easy to target. Our target segments are fairly broad, in part because our services appeal to such a wide range of people. We are focussing on a slightly upscale target market, who can afford our products on a regular basis,” Nishtha summarises.
