'Is your brand selling, or are you selling the brand?' Plum’s Shankar Prasad

Last year was a big one for Plum Goodness. It grew 23% to Rs 402 crore in revenue even though its ad expense barely rose. Normally, startup revenue slows down the moment the founder takes his foot off the advertising pedal.

Has Plum finally turned the big corner? ‘Unaided brand recall is the Holy Grail,’ believes IITian Prasad, who began working life on the Hindustan Unilever shop floor (and later at McKinsey).

In this straightforward conversation with afaqs!’ Sreekant Khandekar, he talks about his journey, what he believes is the essence of the brand, his frustration with some players, and the extraordinary manner in which consumer attitudes towards skincare have changed.

Here are the excerpts from the conversation. For the full interview, do visit YouTube.

Sreekant Khandekar: You started Plum Goodness in 2013 but didn’t raise money until 2018. Why was that? And how did you manage until you got funded? 

Shankar Prasad: I did try, but not very seriously. Back then, there was no faith in challenger brands. Everybody thought it was impossible to take on the larger brands. It’s still very, very tough, so investors were rightly sceptical at that point in time.

I was not chasing scale – I was trying to figure out the product-market fit. I was chasing consumer delight. That did not need a lot of money.

If you're not looking to scale too crazily, you can run real slowly – like in a marathon – and yet have energy left for when the time comes.

Sreekant Khandekar: Did you turn profitable soon?

Shankar Prasad: It took us two years, and we didn’t burn a lot. If you're not looking to scale too crazily, you can run real slowly – like in a marathon – and yet have energy left for when the time comes.

Sreekant Khandekar: Looking back, ought you to have timed your funding differently? 

Shankar Prasad: I would have probably raised at around the same time, but I would have raised far more and got bigger.

Sreekant Khandekar: You went the ‘clean beauty’ and sustainability way before it was even a thing. Why did you do that?

Shankar Prasad: In my previous jobs, I travelled abroad often. I saw the growth of this movement towards ingredient transparency, clean beauty, ethical sourcing and being environmentally responsible. It was becoming mainstream. The prediction was that it would come to India, too – it came sooner than I imagined. 

Moreover, I believed that if you are doing business, you might as well do the right things. We are all fortunate to earn a living in this wonderful country of ours with the economy that allows us to get the jobs that we want. That can't be said for a lot of other places.

There are a bunch of brands which are saying one thing and doing something else. But the consumer can’t make it out because they are confused with so much noise. I don't blame them.

Sreekant Khandekar: Many brands have entered the clean beauty space. It’s crowded. Does that frustrate you sometimes? 

Shankar Prasad: I have never been afraid of competition because I’m very competitive by nature and very driven to excel. I’m not tooting my own horn, but that’s the nature of who I am. 

The frustrating thing is this: there are people, including us, who do the right thing, the honest thing, when it comes to products. And then there are a bunch of brands which are saying one thing and doing something else. But the consumer can’t make it out because they are confused with so much noise. I don't blame them.

How do we stand out in this crowd of people who are pretty much saying the same thing? How do we get the substance of what we are doing out there in a better way? That's my number one challenge today.

Sreekant Khandekar: Your company is called Plum Goodness. Can ‘goodness’ in personal care be measured? 

Shankar Prasad: No, it can’t be.

In the centre of our office we have a pillar on which is this message: ‘At the heart of everything we do is chemistry with heart.’ That's the message we want people to hear about the brand.

Sreekant Khandekar: If it were measurable, it would make your life easier, wouldn’t it? 

Shankar Prasad: Absolutely. In the centre of our office we have a pillar on which is this message: ‘At the heart of everything we do is chemistry with heart.’ That's the message we want people to hear about the brand. That is our number one marketing task today.

I’m not very active on social media, but I’ve learnt that the more authentic you are, the better. That's liberating. We just have to be ourselves in front of people. That's the easiest thing to do. Just be yourself. 

Sreekant Khandekar: Consumers are evolving, but as the market gets more crowded, brands are getting more technical to make their point. Is the gap between what brands say and what consumers understand widening or narrowing? 

Shankar Prasad: Initially, they loved the variety, but it is getting confusing in certain cohorts of consumers. In our dipstick studies we are finding that there’s a nostalgia for simplicity, for uncomplication, that’s coming through.

People are yearning to go back to simpler regimes, simpler ingredients, and things that they understand, not to have their face treated like a chemistry lab.

However, the younger cohort of consumers – in their high teens or early 20s – who are entering the world of skincare are experimenting like crazy. They love the variety and have a ‘give me more’ kind of mindset. For them, it’s like entering a toy shop!

Sreekant Khandekar: In the past few years, there has been a trend of brands highlighting the composition of their products, though I’m not sure how much consumers actually understand. Is that trend past its peak? 

Shankar Prasad: The trend of highlighting ingredients and chemistry is here to stay. As you rightly said, how much people really understand remains to be seen. But transparency and full disclosure are the way communication now takes place in the category. Consumers want to know everything about the product.

Sreekant Khandekar: I wonder if there is more discussion around ingredients in personal care products than there is about ingredients in food. Isn’t that extraordinary?!

Shankar Prasad: That's actually true.

Sreekant Khandekar: You're talking about the challenge of conveying the integrity of your product or the uniqueness of what you're doing. How good are influencers in helping you with this? 

Shankar Prasad: ‘Exploded’ is the right term. Influencers have solved two problems. No 1 is authenticity, and No 2 is relatability. It is well documented that people are running away from ads. The ‘skip’ button is every marketer's nightmare.

Influencers are a way for us to deliver authentic, engaging messages via people who have actually used the product and who believe in it. Influencers are just another – let's say more human – way of getting into people's minds.

The thing that makes offline very difficult is the plurality of it. It's not one account. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them, each with his own mind and his own ways of working.

Sreekant Khandekar: Several entrepreneurs have told me that the real challenge in scaling up comes when brands have to go offline. It is damn tough to get the trade interested in distributing new brands. Was it hard for you, too? 

Shankar Prasad: Yes, very. The thing that makes offline very difficult is the plurality of it. It's not one account. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them, each with his own mind and his own ways of working. It's a very different ballgame compared to online. 

And it's very pull-driven. Entrepreneurs make this mistake of thinking that if they give retailers a better margin, they will push the brand. The reality is that the retailer is too busy to do that. He's got maybe 5,000 SKUs in his store. He doesn't have the time to do anything. And to be very fair to them, it's not as if they're mean human beings; they're just running a business.

This is one cohort of people that I love interacting with. They may be hard-nosed, but they are the ones who are the most efficient capitalists you can find. That is why they survived demonetisation; they survived Covid. They are amazing.

Sreekant Khandekar: They also put in incredibly long hours, seven days a week.

To change tack, I have several questions about Plum’s growth. One, where is your growth coming from? Two, how do you balance growth and profitability? And three, in 2024-25, you grew your topline by 23% to Rs 402 crore, but your ad expenses grew only 7% to Rs 149 crore. How did you manage that and even turn a small profit?

Shankar Prasad: There are many sources of growth, but the main ones are two. First, it is coming from newer consumers who are entering the skincare market. The second is the trend of premiumisation. If the business is growing at between 10-15% annually, the specialist end of the market is growing slightly faster. This is happening because as disposable incomes increase, it’s easy for people to afford good skincare. 

As for finding a balance between profitability and growth: that’s the core of it all, isn’t it? That's where the art of brand building lies: the established brands spend half as much as young brands do on advertising. We have the luxury of running through capital or living with very low margins. But they are listed companies and have to maintain profitability. That’s why it is unfair to compare new brands with the legacy brands.  

Balancing growth and profitability eventually comes down to that one thing: Is your brand selling, or are you selling the brand? If your brand starts selling, things automatically start happening. 

The rest of the economics is the same for everybody. And the only way you'll turn profitable is if your brand becomes a brand in people's minds. 

I think people confuse the highway for the destination. Online is only a highway right now, but the destination is the brand.

The only way brands can come out of this burn and grow cycle is if some of the products become a part of people’s everyday lives. That's how all the great brands in India have been built, across categories. Unaided brand recall is the holy grail.

Sreekant Khandekar: In such a crowded market, who does Plum actually compete with? Is it that Indian and international brands form two distinct buckets? Plus there are so many segments. How does competition work in this business?

Shankar Prasad: Great question to which the answer is, ‘Everybody's competition.’ Let me explain why. 

If you see the average dressing shelf of Indian women – and, increasingly, Indian men, thankfully! – you will never see one brand dominating it. You will see an astounding variety of brands, and they will not even be price laddered. You will see mass brands, mid-level brands and prestige brands, all together.

Sreekant Khandekar: What would explain this behaviour?

Shankar Prasad: It is because people are not deciding on the basis of the brand alone. They're deciding based on their needs in that category. Let’s say a certain face wash suits you. It's not necessary that the same brand's toner or moisturiser will work as well. It's about what suits your skin. And that's really the moment of truth.

The other thing is that consumers will buy a basic aloe vera gel from a mass brand, but when it comes to sunscreen, they will pay a premium because sun protection is the highest order skincare they need. 

To compare with food, you might be really careful about the cheese or meat you buy, but you may not be so involved when it comes to salt.

Sreekant Khandekar: That's well explained. What has been your broad philosophy on design and packaging? 

Shankar Prasad: Our broad philosophy on beauty and personal care is that everything should be a joy to use. As I like to say, skincare should be a treat and not a treatment. If you feel like you are applying medicine to your face, you will stop using it at some point. That is our approach for both formulation and packaging. The form is something we really obsess over.

For design, I first went with a UK-based couple who I found by Googling. They turned out to be fun to work with. They did some beautiful work to create the initial distinctiveness in the packaging. Then, a few years ago, we redid the design so that it was easier for consumers to understand. 

The distinctive element is the plum on every pack. That’s our signature. And then for every range, we have a colour or a maximum of two colours. We are very disciplined about the use of colours and the use of fonts and spacing – but in India people have this itch to change things. It’s like if you are not tinkering, you are not working!

Today, when I see a retailer or an Uber driver, I have tremendous respect for what these guys bring to the table. 

Sreekant Khandekar: Last question: We have been talking about how the consumer and the market have changed. What about you? How has the Plum journey changed Shankar Prasad?

Shankar Prasad: (Laughs) Well, I have grown older, not just in terms of chronological age but in terms of the way I think. My favourite line to people is, 'Step back and think.'  Don't react; respond after thinking.

I used to be very impulsive. I used to favour fast decisions, and perhaps it was needed at one point. But as you grow, both personally and as a business, you tend to look at things from various perspectives. You take a longer-term, more thoughtful view of things. 

Another way in which I have changed is that when I was employed, I didn’t respect the entrepreneur. I'll be honest about it. For example, I used to think that shopkeepers were not intellectual enough in some ways.

Today, when I see a retailer or an Uber driver, I have tremendous respect for what these guys bring to the table. They work very hard and invest their time and money to create output with which they support their families. It’s a business unit, small perhaps, that they are running. 

So, now, when a business partner or someone else comes to me, I’m generally considerate and respectful of them.