Clean Beauty Innovation: How Sravya Adusumilli Went From Chemical Engineer to Entrepreneur
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It all started with the hunt for the perfect nude lipstick. This may not sound like a challenging quest, but I know all my female readers would disagree. Firstly, because color matching is incredibly difficult, especially for women of color in an industry where brands historically catered to white women. Secondly, the ingredients in makeup suck. As consumers, we know this, but we ignore it because we don't think there are any alternatives. Especially alternatives that are packaged nicely and feel luxurious. After years of frustration, Sravya Adusumilli, the founder of Mango People Cosmetics, had enough and just decided to make her own products.
Like every great founder story, it begins in her parent's basement. While Sravya was majoring in chemical engineering at University of Alberta, she was concocting lipstick formulas at night inspired by her mother's teachings and Ayurvedic principles. From a young age, her mother encouraged her to be very mindful about what goes onto her skin, even going so far as to not let her wear makeup because of ingredients like coal tar (yes, tar). In addition to her mother's advice, Sravya looked to Ayurvedic principles for more guidance when choosing ingredients. Ayurveda is a South Asian medicinal practice that focuses on holistic remedies. "One [Ayurvedic] philosophy that really spoke to [Sravya] is 'if you can't eat it, it doesn’t belong on the skin',” which make sense since the skin is basically one giant organ.
After much tinkering and testing on friends and family, Sravya settled on a formula made with mango butter and antioxidant-rich adaptogens like ashwagandha, brahmi and triphala. These ingredients have been gaining recent popularity in America, but have long been used in Ayurvedic medicine. Aside from these powerful herbs, Mango People also uses a variety of nourishing botanical oils like apple, avocado oil, black currant, cherry and olive oil. In an interview with Forbes, Sravya notes, "if you read our ingredient list, it reads like a recipe. You can recognize 80% of them." I also noticed recently in many of their social media posts that they're starting to leave a cheeky disclaimer that you shouldn't eat their products, even though you probably could. This is a quite the flex for Mango People and, in my opinion, sets them leaps and bounds apart from other brands.
More impressive than how their clean products are, is how Sravya took Mango People off the ground. From her college job, she had saved up $10,000 and used it to find labs that would make her products in small batches. She formally launched in September 2020 with a product range that included three different kinds of makeup sticks: multi-sticks (which as the name implies, has multiple uses on the face from blush to eyeshadow), highlighters and bronzers in fourteen different shades. Fourteen shades sounds like a big number for a new makeup brand, but for Sravya the most important thing was creating inclusivity. "I wanted anyone to be able to go on Mango People's website and be able to find at least one shade that really accentuates their natural beauty.”
Launching a makeup brand in 2020 during the pandemic must have been terrifying. Most makeup sales took a hit since Americans were confined to their homes and living in sweats. But all it took for Mango People was one viral video that got two million views to completely transform the trajectory of her company. Within a year, Mango People was pulling six-figures in sales simply through word of mouth and social media posts. Sravya continued to be a one woman show until February of this year. As a one woman show myself who's not worrying about inventory, or accounting, or customer service, I still find myself buried in work. So, I can't imagine how she was able to handle the stress.
In an interview she did with Inc Magazine, Sravya talked about how she was able to go from chemical engineer to founder pretty smoothly. Her chemical engineering degree helps when she's reading technical documents or discussing product formulas with manufacturers. But surprisingly, her degree also helped her learn to deal with the day to day challenges of running a small business.
"You get really good at taking a really complex problem, breaking it down to smaller pieces, and solving it in the most strategic and efficient way possible. In my opinion, an entrepreneur is nothing but a problem solver. That's pretty much what I do on the daily: putting out fires, solving problems, whether it's for our customers, employees, whatever it may be."
Even more impressive, anything Sravya didn't know, she taught herself how to do. "Thank god for YouTube and TikTok gurus," she says. Whether it was learning Shopify or QuickBooks or TikTok strategy, she recognized the vast world of information at her fingertips and used it to her advantage. Other new entrepreneurs should be taking notes. When I decided to go all in on my blog, the first thing I did was hit the Amazon (and my local) bookstore to get my hands on as much information about business, personal branding, and social media marketing. Sravya's ability to pick up new skills quickly served her well as she learned as much as she could online about all things from editing TikToks to small business accounting. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur, Sravya is proving that if you have an idea, you should act on it. As we've talked about a hundred times on this blog, you just have to get started because not having experience or the know-how is not an excuse.
I am truly inspired by Sravya's work ethic and her ability to get her business flourishing. If I ever get the chance to do a follow up interview with her, I would love to know what her lessons from this experience were, and looking back, what things she would do differently. (Of course I'm also dying to know the details of her social media strategy because that's my current fascination with all businesses.)
Looking towards the future, I'm intrigued to see what products launch next. I believe Mango People is taking the beauty industry in an exciting direction. During the early 2000's until quite recently, beauty was focused not on accentuating one's natural features but exaggerating them. Think back to the crazy contouring, the super structured brows, and caked on foundation. Maybe it's just maturity, but I find subtlety much more exciting these days than overly filtered makeup looks, and if you check TikTok, I think the market agrees with me. I look forward to the coming “less is more” era, and Mango People Cosmetics are in the perfect positioning to not just thrive, but lead this change.
Check out Mango People Cosmetics online, and now at Sephora. Be sure to follow them on Instagram and TikTok as well.
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