India’s first ‘Farm-to-FaceTM’ luxury skincare and personal care brand, announced that it has raised US$1.5 million in investment from Green Frontier Capital (“GFC”), a climate-change and sustainability-focused venture capital firm based out of New York (U.S.A.) along with participating current investors. GFC is India’s first climate-change-only focused fund investing in early-stage companies delivering breakthrough innovation in green industries.
RAS is founded and led by an ambitious team of women entrepreneurs – Ms. Shubhika Jain (Founder and CEO), her mother, Mrs. Sangeeta Jain (Co-Founder and CRO) and her sister, Ms. Suramya Jain (Co-Founder and CMO). RAS has quickly grown into a niche, luxury direct to consumer (D2C) skincare and beauty brand and has been growing at a pace of 300% year-on-year since inception. This woman only led organization and its team are very passionate about creating products which are infused with the benefits of active botanicals offering authenticity and purity.
With a vertically-integrated process right from sourcing/growing its own raw materials to reaching consumers directly, RAS has taken utmost care to carefully address each step along the way in order to deliver a top-notch customer experience. “Our ingredients are cultivated organically in our own farms and/or acquired from local farmers and manufacturers who are well regarded for purity and freshness. The ingredients are researched and formulated in our in-house DSIR-approved R&D facility and manufactured in our government-approved facility followed by packing and timely dispatch to our customers.” Said co-founder & CMO Suramya Jain. Major distribution and sales channels include its own D2C website, Nykaa and Amazon along with other e-commerce partners like Blinkit, Flipkart, etc. RAS also supplies its products to luxury hotels, spas and airlines and count the Four Seasons, Grand Hyatt, Marriott and Vistara among its happy customers. RAS®’s immediate goals are multi-dimensional. Team RAS is working towards innovations in its product range which would also deliver skin-care benefits with “wellness” as the central theme. RAS is also looking at focusing on offline EBO’s along with global expansion to put Indian natural and scientific skincare products on the global map. In a market flooded with French and Korean skin-care brands, RAS is confident in building a new-age luxury skincare brand from India catering to a global audience and disrupting the US$130 billion global skincare category (which is growing at 13% CAGR). To deliver on this mission, RAS is hiring aggressively and increasing its workforce in its offices in both Raipur and Mumbai, building various touch points throughout India via Omni channels, and is strengthening its brand presence by partnering with relevant channels. Sandiip Bhammer, Co-Managing Partner and Founder of Green Frontier Capital, said of his fund’s investment in RAS, “We are really excited to announce our investment in RAS.
In the picture – Left to right – Suramya Jain, Sangeeta Jain and Shubhika Jain
