Everywhere around the world, there is an Indian woman in the quest of the entrepreneurial dream. What is driving so many women to start businesses? What challenges do they face & what helps them succeed? Veena Kumaravel, Founder, Naturals Salon have answers to all as she shares her success story and offers lucrative opportunity for women entrepreneurs who want to excel in salon industry.
Women entrepreneurs, not just in our country but across the globe, remain an exception and not the rule. A recent Facebook study revealed that four out of five women in India wanted to start their own business. And the beauty and wellness industry is one where they are making an increasing impact, It’s a sector that’s exploding like never before.
Veena was always passionate about beauty. Irritation is the source of energy and as she was irritated to find a good quality salon, there she found the opportunity – “The Beauty Industry”. To find a salon with good quality along withgood hygiene was a formidable task two decades ago, Veena thought to start one with good hygiene and affordable prices for customers to enjoy the services. Post struggling for funds, not earning the desired profits, she left no stone unturned and believed that after storm comes calm. Her hardwork paid off as Veena along with her husband, CK Kumaravel, Co-founder, Naturals was able to open their second salon too. Eventually, with the help of funds they managed to open six salons.
How did franchise business model help Naturals grow
Veena & CK were always addicted to growth and wanted to make the venture profitable and growth oriented and help others too, hence theystarted the franchising model.
Their role model was Anita Roddick, the owner of The Body Shop, they went to meet her in London in the early 90’s, as then they wanted to bring The Body Shop to India. Anita’s passion and story had sown the seeds of franchising in the couple’s mind & since then they wanted to take up franchise route for whichever business they step into.
In 2007, when no one wanted to get in to a salon business which was considered to be a taboo industry, they introduced a partnership model for its brand’s growth inspired by The Body Shop.
When asked how the franchise business model worked wonders, CK Kumaravel, Co-Founder, Naturals salon avers, “For me, a “no” means next, it can be next person or the next idea. I came out with an idea of 50:50 investment options. Wherein I offered my partner that I will do the startup work and he will do the daily operations of day to day-to-day work. This was sold to all my friends and relatives and some of them trusted Veena and me and invested money for our growth and this became history for the growth, which is basically partnering.”
This concept made them grow to 50 salons and gave the momentum for brand’s growth and they were able to stand tall in the industry. This further gave them an opportunity to stop co-investing and helped the brand delve intofull-fledgedfranchising.
He adds, “We pride as a Southern wonder, but the opportunities in front of us is to make our brand as a national and international wonder. The goal for us now is to create 1000 women entrepreneurs, creating 3000 salons and 50,000 jobs by 2025.”
Naturals is currently present at 700+ plus locations in India and Srilanka and is planning to establish 3000 salons. The Company is seeking partners in North, West & East and international markets as well.
USP of brand Naturals
Naturals focuses on building confidence in the customers, they believe that when a customer visit their salon, the customer should be confident of the quality & type of services received.
According to Veena, “When the Indians look good, they feel good, when they feel good, they perform good and when they perform good, they feel good, this is a cycle and we always wanted to create this cycle for our customers and make them feel good all the time with good confidence in them.”
She adds, “As mentioned, we wanted to remove the word house wives from the Indian dictionary by giving them the confidence and we wanted them to create happy families and thereby creating happy communities of franchisees to bring a radical change in the society through this industry.”
Natural’s USP is to create confident and happy customers, confident employees and happy employees, happy franchisees and confident entrepreneurs and a very happy community and happy society.
The brand believes that their customer is evolving and moving to the next value chain, thereforeas a brand they are evolving and are a part of the race, the market is also evolving and moving up the value chain. From being a neighborhood salon, they have also started Page 3 luxury salon, as customers are upgrading from Naturals to Page 3 and Naturals Signature.
Naturals has categorized their salons based on the offerings, as neighborhood salon, luxury salon, signature salon, Ayurveda, Nails salon and Makeup School. The company envisions to add more verticals eventually.
Women Entrepreneurs – DNA of Naturals
The company’s DNA is to create women entrepreneurs. Its vision is to eradicate the word ‘house wife’ and create financially independent women who can support themselves and their families.
The company also accepts, that, only because of women business partners they were able to sail through the pandemic swiftly. If it was predominantly men entrepreneurs, they would not have shown any interest and many would have closed and gone due to the cash crunch every one faced with. But because the company had network of more than 400+ women entrepreneurs & their passion for this industry, they stood with the brand and worked hard to pull through the brand.
Not just that, the duo thinks that the women franchisees of their brand took care of their staff without any fuss and took over all care of their staff well. If it were men, they would have probably just calculated the ROI and would have thought, why should they support the staff.
The company’s idea of giving a franchise to a woman is validate. Justifying the same, Veena says, “They were not greedy; they waited for the situation to ease. We would have collapsed but our women entrepreneurs held the fort and today we have bounced back with a bang.I have great admiration for women entrepreneurs who go the extra mile to give their best for the customers, staff and for the brand. My message to women in India is that I want to see women being financially independent.”
Marketing & branding support
Natural’s advertising has been well received by its customers, and the business has experienced increased consumer interaction. The brand recall value has grown. As per ChackochenMathai, Head Franchise Development & Training, Naturals, “We being the parent company have always taken the responsibility of partners too in terms of marketing & branding. I always believe that
It’s the job of the franchisor to bring in a brand ambassador to help the franchisees and the consumer to connect. A single salon owner cannot do this but a brand like us can do this to help all the stake owners to build a good imagery.We started off with DeepikaPallikal, Genelia D'Souza and when we wanted to move up North, we had signed up Kareena Kapoor Khan and now Nikki Galrani all have been part of the brand’s journey. This gives our franchisees and customers, a larger-than-life feeling, when a franchisee is investing Rs 50 to 60 lakhfor setting up the salon but gets an advantage of enjoying the marketing activity worth Rs 5 to 10 croreto build the brand. This is the differentiator that we wanted to make in the market and we are one of the first to bring in brand ambassadors for the industry.”
Naturals has been very consistent with its services to its customers & franchisees both. The franchisees take pride to be associated with the brand as they believe that theydo not haveto reinvent the wheel. The company supported itsfranchisees to identify the right location very scientifically and gave them the knowledge of the salon industry. To maintain quality at par across all the salons, the brandprovidesproducts at an affordable price, helps them with social media marketing, constantly train the franchisees and their employees and continually innovate, build new services and help its partners to run the operations with ease and teach them the business.
Five significant trends of salon industry.
1 Customers are moving up the value chain curve,there is an opportunity inevery segment in both higher and lower end of markets.
2 Beauty parlours and barber shops are being organized and they are moving up the value chain. Currently only 20% of the salon industry is organized at this point of time.
Beautifying the salon Industry
Intro:“When the mind is weak, the situation will look like a problem, when the mind is normal,the same situation will look like achallenge. When the mind is strong the same situation will look like an opportunity.”Let’s learn from the Co-Founder, CK Kumaravel about the success mantra and his secret behind Natural’s success.
Your success mantra.
Losers let it happen, winners make it happen. What lies before you and whatlies beneath you are tiny matters when compared to what lies with in you.
Business advice to young entrepreneurs.
Start small, dream Big and keep moving.
Your favorite beauty brand.
The Body Shop.
How significant is it to have a brand ambassador of the brand?
If you don’t have size then it’s not required. But to create size it was required. Create small brands with social influencers these days and then when you want to scale use brand ambassadors.
Your entrepreneurial journey and how did you balance family-work together?
First, we should work, it’s a wrong myth that people talk about work-life balance. I believe if you have to ride a cycle you need to ride it first only then you can balance. It’s important to work hard and then you can balance it as you move forward in your life and profession. Go out and conquer the world and then balance it.
Your inspiration
Many people have inspired me. My own family comes first. My father who revolutionized the sachet revolution in India, my mother and my elder brothers Dr.Rajkumar and CK Ranganathan. I read quite a lot of books and get inspired byeveryone I meet.I take notes of the qualities they have and learn from them. I learn both good bad and convert them to my advantage. Jim Rohn, Stephen Covey, Denis Villeneuve, Robin Sharma, John Maxwell, Shiv Khera, Warren Buffet, Jack Welch, Robert Schuler, Brain Tracy and so on and so forth.
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