Rita Ravindra founded MiaMia Beauty in 2016 to streamline the way women buy and share beauty products. In this one-on-one interview she gave insight into the struggles of being your own boss and what she sees for the future of beauty.
Use the LMU specific link to download the app and change the way you experience beauty: https://mia.app.link/lmu.
Where did you attend college and what for?
UCLA Economics
Have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur?
I actually didn’t, right out of undergrad I was an investment banker for a few years and it wasn’t until the tech boom of the early 2000 before I was interested in tech and potentially becoming an entrepreneur.
What is MiaMia Beauty?
We launched mia mia as a place to discover beauty from your friends, save looks, create looks, save your favorite products, and purchase all in one place. What we noticed was that the beauty user experience is really disjointed. You may discover a product from a friend but often times she doesn’t have that product on her, or she can’t remember the name. Then you end up texting her a bunch of times for the product information and doing research before actually purchasing the product on or offline. We wanted to bring that whole experience together.
What inspired you to start MiaMia Beauty?
I wanted to build a platform for women. I’ve been in male dominated industries my entire life, nothing against men whatsoever, but after my last startup I really wanted to do something I was passionate about. Since I was in college I have always mentored young women or students, thats something thats been very near–and–dear to me throughout my career. When I was thinking about what we wanted to build, it really had to be something that for women that was empowering and made them feel good about themselves. Beauty is this category that’s just exploding, so beauty made sense to be that industry that we target.
What challenges did you face starting your own business?
I think the challenges are always resources. I’ve been self-funding my company, so the challenges are that I meet amazing people, amazing marketing executives, but I can’t afford to bring them on board because I do not have the funds. So that’s been a challenge, is just being very resource constrained. I find myself doing a ton, but what’s cool is that I was able to bring in all these Interns (like Ella McMahan from LMU) and that’s really helped our growth.
Where do you see MiaMia Beauty in the next 5 years? Our vision is to be that one–stop–shop in beauty. Right now, version one is about connecting you with your friends, discovery, and bringing all things beauty into one place. The next step is personalization, what we say about MiaMia is that we are a social platform that simplifies beauty through personalization. In our next phase, since we are collecting all from our users, to be able to then recommend products, looks, and people to follow based upon who you are as an individual. We are currently collecting data by in the beginning you have this really simple style quiz that asks a few questions like your birthday, your beauty concerns, and your skin tone. We will leverage all of that information to make MiaMia more personalized.
How do you manage your time between your work and personal life? I think it’s really about being disciplined. I wake up in the morning, I work out, and I’m in front of my computer by nine. I do definitely try to take breaks because I’m a sole founder and entrepreneur, you can find yourself burning the midnight oil. I try to make sure I see my friends and my boyfriend, it’s important to make time for those who are important in my life.
What advice would you give to college women looking to start their own business?
I’ve spoken at a bunch of campuses, some of the take-aways I have from my career is that it is very important to build your network from the beginning. I always ask students if they have a LinkedIn profile, having that profile and building your network at a young age is so important. As you get older it’s really your network that gives back to you and its one that you can continue to pay it forward to as well. I find that right now in beauty, I didn’t come from the beauty industry, I came from the tech world. The cool thing, because of business school and my network I am usually just one degree of separation away from folks that I want to talk to. The other thing that’s important is to ask questions and not to be afraid to ask for help. Its important to put ego aside and ask those that might be experts in a field or ask somebody to help you with something you find challenging. Thirdly, I think being resourceful in very important. For me, I do have some restrains, so I am constantly thinking of companies that MiaMia could partner with so we could grow faster or what else can I leverage that’s low cost.
Have you always been a beauty lover?
I have actually, I think as I get older I am very interested in skin care. Beauty is fun, it’s something that binds us as women. They say that the reason that the beauty industry has never declined is because of the lipstick effect: even when we are in a recession the beauty industry grows simply because if somebody feeling bad about themselves they’ll buy a five dollar lipstick because that makes them feel better. It’s a fun industry and I saw that it needed innovation.
What is your holy-grail beauty product?
Oh gosh! I would say the Sunday Riley Good Genes Serum that’s a really good one for skincare. Makeup wise I just discovered the Stila glitter eyeshadows, which are amazing! Those are probably my favorites right now.
Let’s say you only have 15 minutes to get ready in the morning, what would be your makeup look?
I definitely use a little bit of concealer, blush, mascara, lip gloss, and I’m done. That’s my five minute routine on a daily basis.
Do you have any makeup advice for young women?
I think what’s really important is skin care and to use SPF from a young age to protect your skin. From a makeup perspective, just have fun! It’s fun to try new things, buy things like huge palettes with colors you wouldn’t normally use to change up your look.