Just over a decade ago, one thing was clear to Shankar Prasad, then 39, — he wanted to build a business. The thrill of creation had always drawn him in, whether as a management trainee on the factory floors of Hindustan Unilever (HUL) where he learned the basics of the consumer goods industry, or many years later, as a director in a private equity fund where he spent most of his time working with cosmetics brand Faces Canada.
“Even though I was from the fund that owned the company and not the company itself, I used to work like it was my company,” Prasad says, adding that it was very difficult to build a cosmetics make-up brand in India back in the 2010s. “The market was nowhere close to the kind of excitement that you see now, and you had to build a distribution network brick by brick through mom and pop shops.”
With Faces Canada, he had to pivot from being the home-brand of a large modern trade chain, to a fully distributed general-trade-heavy structure. Despite the challenges, Prasad’s inclination towards building a beauty and personal care company persisted.
So when he quit his role in 2013 at what is now known as Everstone Capital, he almost immediately started working on the first line of products that he launched a year later under the brand “Plum Goodness”. “I later came to know that there is a term for my idea, it’s called a clean slate brand,” Prasad says.
In the crowded world of beauty and personal care, clean slate brands are about starting fresh— unburdened by legacy, built with a digital-first approach, and shaped by a new kind of consumer consciousness that thrives on authenticity and inclusivity. Plum Goodness has positioned itself as a clean, conscious, and cruelty-free beauty brand that blends active-ingredient-based formulations with playful packaging.
Perhaps Prasad’s inclination towards working with chemical compounds came from his IIT Bombay days, where he was a topper in the chemical engineering department in the early 90s. “When I came to IIT Bombay, it was my first time in the city and I didn’t realise that I was going to live here for the rest of my life,” he recalls, smiling.
After completing his engineering degree in 1997, he spent the next eight years in HUL, working in what it called its “mainlines”, i.e., soaps and detergents. But the itch for “something more” eventually led him to the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. “ISB was the best decision I made because it opened up my eyes to a world which I did not even know existed,” said Prasad, who later specialised in finance and marketing.
That batch of ISB also included some known names, such as entrepreneur and content creator Ankur Warikoo, OfBusiness co-founder Asish Mohapatra, and Rohit Kapoor, who now heads Swiggy’s food marketplace vertical.
After his stint as an associate at McKinsey and then at the private equity fund, Prasad decided to put his savings where his convictions were. It’s a space where consumers actively engage with new ideas, offer feedback, and appreciate innovation, he says. The sector’s blend of science, art, commerce, and psychology continues to challenge and excite him. “For someone intellectually curious, it’s the perfect place to be in,” Prasad adds.
Initially, with no funds to set up a lab, Prasad leaned on the R&D facilities of his manufacturing partners, but remained hands-on about product formulation. For some of his products, like the Green Tea facewash, the formulation hasn’t changed in over a decade and remains a bestseller. He started with two manufacturers, who are still his top partners today, and launched Plum with 14 products in July 2014.
The packaging was clean, the messaging quirky yet clear, such as “Hello Aloe” instead of aloe vera. The brand’s witty and sensorial tone comes alive in its bodycare range with names like “Marshmellow Melt”, “Lily Miss Sunshine”, “Vanilla Vibes”, and “Driving Me Cherry”.
Plum’s use of ingredients like grape seed and sea buckthorn felt new and exciting to consumers. “We were the first to launch grape seed & sea buckthorn as a combination in India, and it was our no. 2 range behind the Green Tea range, which still is one of our top-sellers,” Prasad said. “We later launched a face oil in this range that we subsequently discontinued, but again reintroduced due to very strong customer love for the product.”
In 2014, Plum’s products were first launched on its website before expanding to Amazon and Flipkart a few months later. For the first five years, the company was bootstrapped, when Prasad spent about `100 a day on Facebook for marketing, and handled everything from customer service to payments. He worked mostly alone in the first year, bringing on his first full-time hire in 2015. Though he received advice to find a co-founder, he chose to go solo. “It’s not about control,” he says, “but about having one clear voice of decision-making.”
Today, Plum Goodness is a `350 crore brand with multiple product lines across skin, body, and hair care &
fragrances. It has raised almost $52 million from investors such as Unilever Ventures, A91 Partners, Trifecta Capital, and actor Rashmika Mandanna. The company’s losses have widened every year after its bottomline slipped into red in FY21 as it expanded its scale and offerings.
In FY24, Plum’s net loss widened 17% to 84 crore while its topline rose 22% to nearly Rs 342 crore, as per Tracxn data. However, the company has managed to return to profitability in FY25, as it lowered its investments in its babycare range “Baby Plum” and its men’s brand “Phy”, and doubled down on its core women’s skincare products. But one thing remains certain for Prasad — if he were to build a company again, it’d still be a beauty brand.