Quick Facts
Biography
Vineeta Singh (born 1983) is an Indian entrepreneur and CEO and co-founder of Sugar Cosmetics. She has been a shark (i.e. judge/investor) on the business reality TV show Shark Tank India since the show started airing on SonyLIV in 2021.
Early life and education
Singh was born in 1983 in Anand, Gujarat. Her mother holds a PhD and her father Tej P. Singh is a biophysicist at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences.
Singh completed her education at Delhi Public School, R. K. Puram in 2001. She then enrolled in Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) that year. Singh completed her electrical engineering studies at IIT-M and earned her bachelor's degree in 2005. Afterward, she obtained an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) in 2007.
During her MBA studies, in 2006, she worked as a summer intern at Deutsche Bank and rejected a job despite an annual Rs 1 crore salary. Singh and the other graduate who rejected the same offer wanted to start their own lingerie business, but the idea did not take off as they could not raise the required funding.
Career
In 2007, Singh founded her first startup Quetzal. However, providing background verification checks to recruiters failed to succeed. She started her second startup Fab-Bag in 2012, a subscription platform that provided monthly deliveries of beauty products. Her third startup, Sugar Cosmetics, Singh founded together with her husband in 2015. The company sells cosmetics and personal care products geared towards the Indian market. After closing a $50 million deal with private equity firm L Catterton, Singh characterized the company's products as catering to the preferences of women with diverse skin tones. In September 2022, Bollywood star Ranveer Singh invested an undisclosed amount and became a "brand evangelist" of Sugar Cosmetics.
Singh appeared on the hard copy cover pages of business magazines, such as Forbes India, Business Today, and Businessworld. To Business Today, she revealed that funding was once only granted under the condition that her husband joined the company full-time, which she viewed as gender discrimination.
In 2021, Forbes India listed Singh as one of its Forbes India W-Power list of women achievers.
In 2023, Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor Khan formed a joint venture with cofounders of Sugar Cosmetics, Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee, to launch a Korean skincare brand Quench Botanics in India.
Entertainment
Singh is one of the major investors/judges on the business reality show Shark Tank India.
In 2022, Singh along with the other Shark Tank India judges appeared as a VIP contestant in Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Hindi version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. She also appeared as a guest on The Kapil Sharma Show together with other Shark Tank India judges in the same year.
Awards and recognition
Singh, respectively her startup Sugar Cosmetics, received the following awards related to her entrepreneurship:
- Start-up of the year award by Entrepreneur Awards, Delhi (2019).
- W-Power Award by Forbes India (2021).
- BW Disrupt 40 Under 40 Award by Businessworld (2021).
- Fortune's 40 Under 40 (2021).
- World Economic Forum's Young Global Leadership list (2022).
- She won 2 Gold and 2 Silver medals for IIT Madras during the 4 Inter IIT Sports Meets attended from 2001–2005.
Personal life
In 2011, Vineeta Singh married Kaushik Mukherjee and the couple have two sons. She met Kaushik during their studies at IIM Ahmedabad.
Singh is a triathlete and ultramarathon runner and has participated in 20 marathons, ultramarathons, and 12 half-marathons. She also took part in the 89-km Comrades Marathon from 2012 to 2014. She completed the 2017 Ironman Triathlon in Austria. In the 2018 Mumbai Marathon, she ran a total of 21 km in 2:42:51s while being 6 months pregnant.