Karishma Rathaur grew up in Delhi witnessing her uncles’ unsuccessful business ventures and her family’s general aversion to entrepreneurship. But that didn’t stop her from harbouring a deep entrepreneurial spirit, which eventually led her to build Honestly, an AI-powered beauty platform.

Rathaur’s entrepreneurial journey began in her college years at Delhi University, where she experimented with various projects, including a venture aimed at managing sponsorship budgets for companies during college fests.

Although the project did not succeed, it introduced her to influential figures in the industry, including entrepreneur and author Ankur Warikoo. These encounters ignited her fascination with the business world; she was particularly allured by the thought of working in a corporate environment.

However, despite her early enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, Rathaur, who came from a service-class family, felt the pressure to secure a stable job. This led her to work for companies like Google, where she learned invaluable lessons and expanded her professional network.

It was during this period that Rathaur honed her skills and built the confidence necessary to venture into her own business endeavour. Becoming an entrepreneur In her first attempt as an entrepreneur, Rathaur co-founded a company called Salad with Aruna Chawla in 2022, which focused on helping women with hormonal health conditions through lifestyle changes.

“However, the business faced significant challenges, as we lacked a background in health. Also, our product-first approach proved difficult in India, where behaviour change is not easy,” says Rathaur.

The founders eventually decided to shut down the venture, realising that they did not have a clear path ahead and lacked the necessary expertise to pivot effectively. However, Rathaur was undeterred by this setback.

In April this year, she embarked on a new journey with Honestly, with co-founder Vivek Madani. This time, she was determined to tackle all challenges with the lessons she had learnt from her prior experiences.

Honestly, which is being built as an app, aims to simplify the process of finding the right beauty products by providing comprehensive information on over 600 attributes of various beauty products, such as the skin types the product is for, its efficacy for specific issues like acne, and raw materials. It also facilitates a community of users to share information with each other.

“We are starting with the bestselling brands and will keep growing the catalogue as we scale,” says Rathaur.

She adds that, while social media and e-commerce have facilitated product discovery and purchase, consumers often struggle with the intermediate steps of deciding which product to buy.

“The platform seeks to bridge this gap by offering better search and comparison tools, as well as a community for users to ask nuanced questions and share experiences,” she says.

One of the key insights that guided the development of Honestly was the observation that consumers spend significant time researching beauty products before making a purchase, often cross-referencing reviews and trying out products in-store despite online reviews.

“This is a real, deep-seated problem in the market that Honestly aims to solve,” says Rathaur.

Challenges and learnings

Initially, the founders had a linear approach, inspired by platforms like Flip in the United States, where users buy products and earn rewards for video reviews. However, they quickly encountered challenges with this model.

“We found that we were primarily attracting individuals interested in becoming influencers, rather than those deeply passionate about skincare or those with specific skin conditions like eczema or acne,” says Rathaur.

“Whereas our goal was to serve a community that genuinely cared about skincare and shared personal experiences and conditions that significantly impacted their quality of life.” The founders also found that their one-to-many communication model wasn’t fostering the personalised, in-depth discussions they wanted.

Today Honestly is developing a robust search system indexed on ingredient lists and supported by peer-reviewed scientific studies. The system also considers users’ past purchase history from platforms like Nykaa and Amazon to provide more tailored product recommendations. It also enables threaded conversations wherein only users with similar skin types and purchase behaviour can respond.

“This ensures that the advice and recommendations come from individuals with relevant experiences, increasing the likelihood of finding effective solutions,” says Rathaur.

Honestly integrates AI (artificial intelligence) to fact-check recommendations and claims, ensuring users receive accurate, science-backed information. This feature also aims to counteract misinformation, including misleading beauty hacks.

The platform has already garnered considerable interest; a single post on social media platforms, including Linkedin, attracts between 300 to 500 new users to Honestly’s waitlist today, says Rathaur. Need for women to support each other The absence of adequate representation of women in leadership positions is a challenge, says Rathaur.

“Sometimes while facing a room full of male VCs, it was hard to talk about our problem statement or explain specific issues that women uniquely faced on a day-to-day basis,” she says.

At times, Rathaur says, it was hard to even come across enough women founders to back them. When they couldn’t relate to the problem, they couldn’t relate to the solutions either, she adds. “The way forward really lies in women, with a deep understanding of these shared problems, supporting and encouraging other women to start businesses that matter to the community.”