Priyanka Ganjoo: Founder & CEO of Kulfi Beauty

Episode 638

In this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Priyanka Ganjoo, Founder and CEO of Kulfi Beauty. Priyanka’s mission goes far beyond creating beauty products—it’s about building a platform that celebrates South Asian culture and champions inclusivity in the beauty industry. After years of working on the corporate side of beauty, Priyanka launched Kulfi in 2021 to address the underrepresentation of South Asians and create a space that celebrates vibrant self-expression.
During our conversation, Priyanka shares her journey from navigating the corporate beauty world to launching her own brand. We discuss the challenges of building an inclusive beauty brand, what it means to bring cultural authenticity into product innovation, and her vision for Kulfi Beauty’s future. Priyanka also talks about being the first South Asian-owned makeup brand to partner with Sephora and the impact of Kulfi’s bold community-centered approach.
Whether you’re passionate about representation, entrepreneurship, or building a brand rooted in purpose, this episode is full of inspiration and actionable insights. Tune in to hear Priyanka’s story and learn more about how she’s changing the beauty landscape for the better. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Super, super excited to have my next guest here today, we have Priyanka Ganjoo, who is the founder and CEO of Kulfi beauty. You may know it as colfie, an incredible, incredible beauty company that Priyanka took the liberty to share with us exactly what was missing and decided to create these products that are really changing the game. After spending years on the corporate side of beauty, Priyanka realized South Asians were being overlooked and underserved, and so in 2021 she took the leap and launched coffee, a vibrant, unapologetic brand that’s all about celebrating beauty and culture. They are a makeup brand that you can definitely find in Sephora, as well as online cult favorite products, from free the brow to building a super, super, incredible line of so many other products as well. I’m actually playing today, if you’re viewing this on video with the lip, that is so, so good. I have it in a couple different colors, and it’s super, super great. And I cannot wait to dig into Priyanka journey. So let’s get started. Priyanka, so happy to have you here. I’m so happy to be here. Super excited. So I always talk about the brand first, the coffee beauty. What is it in your own words, and why did you feel that the world really needed it?

Priyanka Ganjoo 2:24
It’s wild to me that I have a beauty brand, right? And I start with this because growing up, I actually never even wore makeup till my late 20s, actually. And it was because I never really saw myself in campaigns. I never thought I was one of those pretty girls who who wore makeup with permission to wear makeup. And it was only when I started working in the beauty industry or the corporate side. I worked at Estee Lauder and then at Ipsy, and I, like, started playing around with beauty on my own terms. So I realized, like, it’s fun, like it’s makeup. You know what I mean? Like it’s you can put on a gold shadow, you can put on a red lip and just feel good about yourself, and it doesn’t have to come with judgment. It doesn’t have to come with like, trying to conform to certain beauty standards, and that’s kind of the space that I really, really felt was missing. And especially being Indian, being of South Asian descent, I feel like there’s a whole group of us that just never saw that representation growing up. And the reason we it took me till my late 20s to explore makeup was probably because I never saw that growing up, but people who look like me, and I think that was the space that I felt was missing, and I wanted to approach it from a place of joy, right? How do we create this joyful relationship with beauty? As opposed to being like this is a standard you need to fit into, because that’s how I discovered beauty, and that’s why we’re called kofi. Kofi is a Indian dessert, kind of similar to ice cream, and it’s like, well, we have it all celebrations, like if someone’s getting married, or someone’s birthday, and like, it’s just something that signifies, like happiness and color and texture and all the good things in life. And that’s that’s really kind of the inspiration behind COVID. We

Kara Goldin 4:02
know that we have a lot of students who or new graduates listening to the podcast as well. Given that you were not a big makeup person, how did you decide to work at Estee Lauder?

Priyanka Ganjoo 4:18
So I ended up at sa Lauder from a strategy side. So I always love consumer goods, right, like I so in post business school, I went to business school, I started I was working at the Boston Consulting Group, which is a strategy consulting firm, and the area that I specialized in was consumer goods. And I think I had a national affinity to consumer goods, because we were just talking about it like, you can touch and feel the product right. You can, like, drink a beverage, you can touch the fashion. You can touch beauty. And so I transitioned to the strategy team at Estee Lauder. That was kind of the next role I had. And it came from a business perspective of, like, wanting to be in consumer goods and being really attracted from. Sort of like a business perspective. This was 2014 and that’s kind of when the influencer, creator YouTube era was just at like that, the cusp of like change, and I was seeing how quickly the business was evolving. So I was just fascinated by the beauty industry from a business perspective. But then I fell in love. How did

Kara Goldin 5:19
you find the courage to actually go start your own business. It’s not only your own business, but also focusing on, you know, really a mission based business too, that something that you care deeply about. It

Priyanka Ganjoo 5:35
was a difficult decision from like, if I were to look at it from a logistical standpoint, right? I was, I was doing well in corporate. I had a good salary. Like all the things that I thought I wanted to accomplish in my professional career were happening, right? So it was, it was great, but then taking this leap into the unknown was hard, but it was a voice that was in my head for a few years, right at that point, like I’d been thinking about this for two years, and I’ve had ideas before, but nothing that I felt consistently so passionate about and consistently like this will this can change someone’s life, right? This will change my life and like I know that if I had seen this growing up as a little girl, something like that could have a huge impact on someone. And the power of that feeling is just, was just so big that it kind of overrode those practical considerations of, like, how am I going to pay rent? And I was like, You know what? Like, I’m 30, I’m in New York. Like, if not now, then when, and if not me, then who? And it just kind of took the leap That’s

Kara Goldin 6:37
wild. So, and you’re currently, are you living in Nashville now, as compared to New York. So because you mentioned New York, so it used to be that you couldn’t build a beauty brand outside of maybe Los Angeles or New York. What would you say to that today? I mean, so many people have said, like, that’s one thing that COVID did was really change the game on on that. But I’d love to hear you speak to that.

Priyanka Ganjoo 7:05
That’s actually COVID was going to be what I was going to say, because we, I left my job in 2019 when I started, sort of like, you know, I was in my New York apartment doing, like, little focus groups and interviews, starting to work on the brand. And then 2020 when we started, kind of getting to the manufacturing side of things, things shut down. So my only option, really, to exist and to continue on the journey till our launch was which was 2021. Was to work remote. Everything was remote. Everything was just like, you know, being on a phone call, and that kind of shaped who we have become as a company and a culture. And now, you know, our team is in New York, and we have an office there, but we’re a hybrid model. So, you know, again, sometimes people go into office, and that’s great for collaboration, but then sometimes they’re just remote. And I’m like, you know, in Nashville, and, like, I go in to find a new york once a month, but it is actually possible to shape a high performance culture that’s connected to the culture, culture and beauty today, because we’re also interconnected on social. We’re so connected on like, all these different tools. So I do think that you can build from anywhere, and it’s just about like creating those networks and groups of people that you can sort of reach out to, and, you know, get, I think that’s kind of the network effect, or benefit of being in an LA or New York is like, there’s like 20 other entrepreneurs that are doing the same thing as you, and you can call them up or meet them for coffee. And so if you can do that virtually, then you are golden. If you can join, like, maybe slack communities or and that’s actually one of the things that happened, was that I ended up joining a lot of slack communities, because that’s kind of how I was getting like digital chat communities. That’s how I was getting like information, like, which warehouse do I use, things that otherwise maybe I would have benefited from, with in person interaction.

Kara Goldin 8:49
That’s awesome. So first steps, you’re, you’re, you have this idea you’re gonna go out and launch very different I would imagine you would agree, from working at Estee Lauder, it was just Priyanka, I’m sure, in the beginning. But where do you how do you go then, from this idea, how many SKUs Did you launch with? How did you figure out? How am I actually going to launch this product? You know, I don’t have the muscle like an SD Lauder behind me. How am I actually going to go do this? And you talked about Slack communities, but I think being able to be resourceful is so huge in the beginning, which obviously you were able to do that. But can you kind of think back on those early days and and share this with us? Yeah,

Priyanka Ganjoo 9:41
I would say, like, the the first sort of, like initial phase, was truly a passion project. Of course, this was a business, but it truly came from me being like, I just want to see this come to life. I just want to do this. And, you know, of course, it’s like proof product market fit is, I guess, how the Tech Pros would call this. But essentially, it was like, I just. Want to put it out there and see if anyone resonates, if this product resonates, right? And so for me, that meant when I when I first initially had this idea, I wanted to understand like, I’m feeling this way, are other people feeling this way, right? So I went into, there used to be lots of Facebook groups and that were active. And I went into Facebook groups in New York being like, I’m building this beauty brand, and it’s inspired by South Asian beauty, and like, come talk to me, and met people in coffee shops, did phone calls with them, and, you know, we started a Instagram account, and maybe it had like a couple of like 100 followers, like, you know, and we started saying, like, beauty, I forget what the exact face was, but it was like for you, for us, made by us, something like that, you know. So just putting in, like, some of the brand messaging, people somehow started finding us, and then I would, as soon as they followed us, I’d be like, can we get on a phone call? So it’s just really a lot of, like, understanding what the consumer wants and what are they missing. And that’s how the idea of a Kara came from. Because Kara, which was the first product we launched with is traditional South Asian eye pigment. And a lot of the people that I was speaking with were saying, like, oh, yeah, I have it. I have, you know, if you’re wearing an Indian outfit or, you know, a South Asian outfit, you have to use Kajal, because otherwise it’s just part of the look. It’s just, yeah, yeah. But what I have is my mom’s and it’s smudges, and I don’t really like it. I don’t know what ingredients are in there. And just like, all of this, like, there wasn’t this, like, positive association with it, and that was my aha moment from those interviews, being like, Wait, like, this is, this is such cultural resonance for us, and nobody’s kind of, like, reimagined it for, like, my generation. So let me start there, and that’s kind of what we started with. And then, of course, there’s the realities of like, what can I actually afford to launch with? So we launched with only one collection, which was the kajal in five shades. It was a very limited launch, because, as with any launch, you have mOqs, which was minimum order quantities. And the manufacturers I was working with had a 5000 unit minimum order quantity, so I knew very quickly, like, this is what I could realistically afford. But I think that focus was really, really good, because it allowed me to really tell that story and build the brand. Because it’s really, of course, we have really high quality product, but it’s really about, like, the experience of like, using a coffee product. How it makes you feel that I wanted to get across and with that one product and focus, we could really channel all our energy to do that.

Kara Goldin 12:30
And at what point did you feel like, okay, we can branch out of just the one skew, or, I should say, one line and it and move into other things.

Priyanka Ganjoo 12:43
It took us 18 months from the after we launched our eyeliner to launch our second product, which was the concealer. And the concealer was something that I’d been working on from day one, even before the eyeliner. Actually, because that was a personal pain point, I always struggled to find concealers that matched my olive gold beach undertone. It’s like a huge group, like skincare group, undertone group, that’s completely underserved in the beauty industry. In fact, like, I think we’re, we’re doing a lot of work that I don’t think has been done before in understanding those shades and undertones so but even from that time to when we launched the casual to getting to a place where we could launch a concealer. It took us 18 months because we were trying to figure out, like, how do you, like, run a website? I was doing customer service. We were I was shipping from my apartment in New York. Right after a year, I think we finally were able to move to a warehouse. So I think there was just, like, a lot of like, basics that I had to learn before I could be like, Okay, now I’m ready to kind of take that next step and launch a second product.

Kara Goldin 13:45
So free the brow is one of your standout products. Can you share the inspiration behind

Priyanka Ganjoo 13:50
that? Free the brow is truly a love letter to browse and love letter to my thick brows. So I grew up, you know, I have thick brows, which now is such a blessing, but growing up, I was teased for it, and it was something that I was always kind of made fun of. And I thought that was such a dichotomy in how we treated our hair on our head, which was always the ritual of care, like lots of oiling, and, you know, just like beautiful products, and you want hair to be thick and luscious, but the moment it’s on your face, it’s like the devil, you didn’t get it out. You need to tweeze it. You need a thin you need thin eyebrows, right? And so and so, I kind of wanted to again, shift that relationship, like, let’s have a joyful relationship with our brows. Let’s make them bloom and and, you know, use that idea of, like, how we care for our brow, for our hair, with hair oiling into a brow product. And that’s where free the brow, the name comes from, but also how we formulated the product. So it is it helps you laminate and shape your brows, but it also has serum properties which allow it to hydrate and increases appearance of thickness of brows over time. And so that was really kind of the. The message and the product, and that’s done so so so well for us, and it’s been such a standout in the brow category, which, you know, in the beauty industry, every category is saturated. Brow is really saturated with some big, big name players. And we, we came into it with a very specific lens, and we’re able to speak very differently. And that’s kind of that success. Love

Kara Goldin 15:21
it so bold colors in the products, but really nice, muted, sophisticated, but fun packaging. How has your packaging changed? I guess you’ve added SKUs along the way, but how has it changed since the beginning? Because I think people often are, you know, it’s painful, right to launch that first product. It’s like showing everyone your baby. But I always tell people that you’re gonna change it anyway. I mean, right, a little bit you’re gonna tweak it, because you’re gonna learn so much from the consumer. But how much has your packaging changed at this point, I would

Priyanka Ganjoo 16:02
say some of the design elements have stayed the same, right? We kind of came in with this logo that I think has a very strong impression. We have our colors, which is the lavender and then the orange. So some of the basic elements have remained the same, but we have evolved it over time to really reflect, one of course, the functionality of the product, right? Like, sometimes you realize, like, something isn’t functionally working. So an example is actually the lossy lip that you’re you’re using. We’re actually going to update the packaging in the next few months, because we got some feedback that there was some like, issues with leaking, and some of the it was a very small percentage, but it was enough for me to be like, you know, what? Like, why do we want to make anyone unhappy? Like, what can we do to fix it? And we were able to fix it right. So there’s a functional component where it’s like, how do we fix things to be better? I think from a design perspective, we’ve stayed relatively constant. But that doesn’t mean that people feel this pressure that they have to get it right the first time. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think, you know, there have been times where we’ve gone back to say, like, what we do differently in future packaging. But overall, I would say, from a design esthetic perspective, it’s been, it’s been pretty consistent.

Kara Goldin 17:12
So Sephora is huge. It’s sort of the the dream, right, for so many entrepreneurs wanting to get into a store and launch their their brand. How did that all come about?

Priyanka Ganjoo 17:30
Oh my gosh. I always say like sometimes timing is everything right. And you know, when we first started talking to Sephora through Sephora accelerate, Sephora, accelerated Sephora incubation program. And in 2021 or 2020 when I applied, that was the peak of phase, which, you know there was, I think they signed the 15% pledge, which was basically making sure that they have more black founders and founders of color represented on their shelves, and I’m a beneficiary of that work, because they that allowed for them to shift the program to focus on founders of color. And we got into that program, and that was the first interaction that I had with Sephora. And the funny thing is, when we got selected, we hadn’t even launched, so it was truly just a vision board lab samples, like it was, I think that that’s what I really appreciate about Sephora, is that they really understood the vision and kind of what we wanted to build, and that was the first interaction. And I feel like that alignment really helps, because as you want to, like, take risks and grow a business, like, if your partners, retail partners, and it’s true for investors, any stakeholder, if they’re not aligned with your bigger picture vision, I think it’s very hard to like move the needle. So that was a really good sign that they were aligned with our vision. And then as we graduated from the program in mid of 2021 but still again, it took us 12 months from that point to actually launch on support.com which we did then in 2022

Kara Goldin 19:03
so social media is the wild west for brands, constantly changing, but I feel like you guys have really cracked the code on Tiktok as well as Instagram. Why do you think that is I mean, how have you really gotten to stand out above and beyond. You have amazing products and you’re awesome. But what, what would you say has really been sort of the the secret sauce there,

Priyanka Ganjoo 19:33
I think my mantra is, social is personal. And that started with, you know, when I said we the first few Instagram followers we got, I got on a phone call with them because I wanted to understand them, right. They’re real people who want to interact with the brand. We launched a blog first, so it was called Coffee bites. So prior to us even launching the product in 2020 we had a blog where we featured founders, sorry, writers who are. Up. This was probably their first time, sort of writing for a blog, and they were talking about, like they were Gen Z writers talking about beauty and culture and all these like experiences that no one had made, maybe before given them a platform to talk about. And it was such an amazing experience, like working with these young writers, and we’ve kind of telling their stories, right? And I think we’ve sort of taken that same mindset and shifted that to our social so when you look at our Tiktok, our Instagram, when we do campaigns, we try to focus, of course, on the product, but also really kind of like, Who’s the person behind the camera, and how do we kind of showcase diverse people we launched. You know, for example, free the brow the campaign, we did a casting call on Tiktok, and I was like, I want to find a girl with a unibrow. And you know, we found that from the community. And she showed up, she was so confident. And those photos are amazing. And I think then her seeing her on sephora.com and, you know, and Sephora, like, that cycle of integrating social and storytelling is really kind of what I think makes us stand out and why our engagement is high. And I hope we can continue to have that as we scale, definitely.

Kara Goldin 21:14
So if you had to define a period of time where you would call it your pinch me. Is this real moment? What was it? I feel like you’ve had a few of them, but there’s always those, you know, super great ones that I always say, go on the the timeline right of this, this. This was awesome. This was awesome. But I’d love to hear what you would say. My

Priyanka Ganjoo 21:40
favorite one has to be walking into a store and actually seeing coffee on the shelf, like, into a Sephora. Like, are you kidding? Like, you know, you have brands like NARS and Pat McGrath, like these industry giants and pioneers, and I’m in the same space as them. My brand is in the same space as them. That is truly like one of those like moments where I’m like, Wow. I so grateful that we have been able to make it happen. And I think the constant reminder is always looking at like people leaving comments like, saying, like, you know, I finally found my concealer shade, and this makes me feel so good. Or something about the product, or something about the brand, like, I am so, like, excited to see this brand on the shelf. It makes me feel seen. Like, those notes I try to, like, screenshot them and save them, because it’s just again, it’s kind of coming back to, why did I leave my job? It’s like, okay, really good. Like, you left your job because of something that was meaningful.

Kara Goldin 22:41
So the beauty world is full of trends and and lots of noise, beautiful noise, and many cases. But how do you filter out distractions, as a you know, founder, but also somebody leading a company that you know is is really focused, but it’s, it’s, you know, sometimes it’s tough, right? Like, you see other people gaining success, and you’re like, oh, maybe we should go do that product, or I need to focus. I mean, how do you do that? How do you stay focused and really, really not get distracted by some of the other stuff going on in the beauty industry.

Priyanka Ganjoo 23:23
I try to look at it from a lens of, is this sustainable long term, right? What is the value that I’m creating in the long term? And I think the value you create is comes from within your brand, right? It comes from me being like, Okay, this is what my consumer is asking for. This is what’s missing for them, right? That’s the value that I’m creating by launching feed the brow. Like, if I were to follow trends, I’d probably not launch a brow gel that makes your brows look thicker, because now we’re back to kind of pin brows trending again, apparently. So you have to kind of go back and like, center, your consumer center, your consumer center, what they’re asking you for center. You know, even the lip stain that we have, we got, we had actually launched lipstick, which is, which was, like, a great introduction to lip but they our customer was telling me, I want something that’s a little bit more long lasting. I want something that’s a little bit more glossy, and that kind of created the lip stain. So it was really about, like, centering. What is our consumer looking for? Because that’s how you create long term value, because otherwise you’re just like anyone else. And anyone else, and then someone could copy you, and then it’s like you’re you’re kind of in a race to the bottom because you’re not truly differentiated. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 24:30
definitely. So you’ve been at this now for a few years. You’ve had incredible experience, and you must be so proud. I think sometimes it’s, it’s hard to stop and and, you know, obviously you go into a Sephora and you see that you’re on the shelf there, and maybe you see somebody opening up one of the lip stains, and you’re, you know, it’s, it’s super exciting. But what. Advice would you give for other entrepreneurs, knowing what you know today, trying to build a brand, a company that’s both authentic and scalable.

Priyanka Ganjoo 25:10
There is power in where you are right now, and I think that’s really important. It’s kind of thinking back to that day one, when I had 100 followers, I was able to get on a call with every follower that joined, right? Like, I can’t do that now, unfortunately, right? Because I just don’t have the bandwidth to do it. But there was power in that, because it created word of mouth, so that when we launched on day one, like, there was, I think, we had 3000 followers by the day we launched, and we got, I think, $30,000 of day one sales, right? And if you think about that, like, how powerful those like one on one connections were, that’s really important to remind yourself, like you could be at any stage, and there’s value. And you know, always looking like I want to be bigger, I want to do this and that. But where you are, you have certain advantages. Where a company that’s actually bigger might not have those advantages, right? They’re losing those advantages as they’re growing bigger. And I think that’s something that I wish entrepreneurs would remind themselves, and I try to remind myself there’s power in where I am right now, because it still allows us to take risks, and, you know, we can still innovate in a way that’s very like, free from, like, certain shareholder pressure, for example, right? I think those are the things that I have to remind myself to say, like, what there’s so much we can do where we are right now?

Kara Goldin 26:28
Yeah, absolutely. So for anyone listening who’s sitting on an idea that but hasn’t made the leap yet, what’s your big message to them, get

Priyanka Ganjoo 26:39
moving. Don’t sit on your idea, you know, just, just do it. Just put

out, like, version one. I mean, I look at, look back at the first sort of presentation I put together, and honestly, I find it like I’m embarrassed. It’s cringe, but you have to just be okay with that. You have to be okay with being cringe. Okay with putting out the version one, because it’s not gonna be perfect, but you’ll get better, and you can only get better once you do something. So just do it, and don’t be don’t worry about being embarrassed.

Kara Goldin 27:08
Priyanka, you’re a force to be recognized. So thank you so much for sharing your story. Thanks for creating a coffee so so good. It’s you’ve you’ve really done a terrific job. And thank you for building a mission based company that really focuses on giving lots of people who are not represented much better products that they want to use. So you have done an amazing, amazing job. We’ll have all the info in the show notes for coffee beauty, but also follow Priyanka on Instagram and Tiktok, because she really has done a terrific job. And if this episode fired you up, leave a review. Share it. Definitely go out and buy those coffee products for sure. Thanks for tuning in, and thank you so much Priyanka again, and you are a great reminder to go chase your dreams and just go do it. So

Priyanka Ganjoo 28:13
thank you. Thank you so much.

Kara Goldin 28:15
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey. I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now. You.

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