personalized-beauty
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Chaitanya Nallan and the business of asking first
Before SkinKraft and Vedix, Chaitanya Nallan was paying people to receive advertisements on their phones. Across two decades of building businesses, he has kept returning to the same question: what does the customer actually want?
IncNut turned beauty advice into a ₹321 crore deal
The company behind SkinKraft and Vedix learned to sell by listening to readers. Now Emami owns 60%, and the next test is turning personalized beauty into renewed growth.
Function of Beauty
Function of Beauty is a New York-based beauty company that makes personalized hair, skin, and body care products. Customers take an online quiz about their hair type, goals, and preferences, and the company's in-house technology mixes a formula made to order - down to color and scent. Founded in 2015 out of MIT, it helped popularize mass personalization in beauty and has since expanded from a pure DTC model into major retailers like Target and CVS.
Prose
Prose is a New York-based beauty-tech company that makes custom haircare and skincare to order. An online consultation feeds a proprietary AI engine that blends from a library of natural ingredients into formulas tailored to each customer's hair, scalp, skin, lifestyle, and even local climate. Founded in 2017 by ex-L'Oreal and Phyto executives, Prose is a Certified B Corporation, a Public Benefit Corporation, and a carbon-neutral brand that has produced millions of bespoke products and reached profitability while expanding into skincare and licensing its technology stack, Singular.
Arnaud Plas
Arnaud Plas is the co-founder and CEO of Prose, the New York based beauty-tech company that makes custom haircare and skincare to order, one formula per person. A former L'Oreal digital and e-commerce executive, he left big CPG in 2017 to attack the one-size-fits-all model with AI-driven consultations and a software-run, make-after-you-buy factory. Under his watch Prose reached profitability in 2023, sold more than 10 million bespoke products, and pushed net sales past $140 million on its way to an estimated $160 million in 2024.
Monica Belsito
Monica Belsito is the CEO of Function of Beauty, the made-to-order personal care company that turns an online quiz into a custom bottle of shampoo. She took the top job in July 2025 after a career spent building consumer brands that get acquired: founding CMO at feminine-care brand LOLA, CMO at hummus maker Sabra (bought by PepsiCo in 2024), and senior brand manager at Dollar Shave Club before its $1 billion sale to Unilever. A Georgetown grad and Harvard MBA who started in crisis PR and Colgate's management program, she now steers Function of Beauty's push from DTC into shelves at Target, Sephora, Walmart, and Amazon.