THE BEAUTY OF YOU

Meet two female beauty founders who took personal beauty struggles and catalysed them into something bigger.

- Karen Alfonso

BINDYA TALLAURI

Founder of Bindt Beauty

Bindya started out as a model, and her experiments with makeup brands caused her hormonal acne to worsen. Bindt Beauty is a natural and eco-friendly makeup brand,

Edited excerpts from an interview

What led you to launch your own beauty brand? Take us through that lightbulb moment.

During my time as a model, I had learnt about several makeup techniques, brands and their formulas, while working with various makeup artists. Like any other girl, I was drawn towards makeup and would go into Sephora during my travels and buy the latest product launches so I could try them out. During this period, I was also facing a lot of hormonal acne. The makeup product experiments weren't helping either - in fact, they would cause more flare-ups due to the fragrance in the formulations. Then my friend introduced me to a few clean beauty brands from America. At first, I was a little apprehensive because they contained oils and were mainly crème formulations. I really wasn't keen on applying them on my face, as my acne was severe. But, once I read up and found they were not harmful, I tried one out. Although it wasn't giving me as great coverage as the foundation formulas, I quite liked the minimal look. That's when I decided to introduce this kind of makeup in India. This was around 2015.

Why did you decide to get into makeup and not skincare?

Makeup is something I have loved and will always do. Its power to transform a person, the confidence it offers is amazing. Over the years, I have come to love skincare and to realise a good base is very important. I knew I had to combine skincare into colour cosmetics to make them wholesome.

What were the challenges you met, especially when it came to formulating makeup that is organic?