Namrata Kamdar, is an experienced Brand Developer with over 18 years of experience in managing, developing and growing personal care/beauty brands and businesses globally. 

She has worked for a number of larger FMCG companies including PEPSI, Coke and Unilever. Whilst at Unilever she led the complete development of Baby Dove as well as the brand redeployment of Lakme Skin Care and Color cosmetics in India circa 2005. Prior to her current role, Namrata was Skincare innovation and Digital Director at Lumene, a boutique Finnish beauty brand, and a Unilever Ventures portfolio company. During her time there, she revamped its skincare portfolio and oversaw the launch of Lumene.com. 

Her work experience covers a diverse set of product categories with a focus on female consumers, however over the past 10 years she has focussed on product development and design within personal care and beauty. Passionate about Design, Beauty and Trends, Namrata’s other areas of expertise are Digital UX and understanding multicultural audiences. She is also Founder and CEO at Shalohm, working to co-develop and invest with early stage entrepreneurs within digital, wellness and beauty sectors. Namrata serves on the boards of several companies, including Kamdar Private Limited and Vidya Cathedral Education Trust. 

After managing, developing and growing global brands and businesses globally, she decided to create Plenaire - a community based beauty brand for Gen Z. Plenaire was launched on September 2nd, 2019  at a press event at Spring in Somerset House, London. Plenaire partnered exclusively with Liberty to introduce its debut collection and is currently stocked at a number of Europe’s finest beauty retailers as well as cultbeauty.com. Its first set of products Plenaire Tripler 3in1 Exfoliating Clay and Rose Jelly Makeup Remover have achieved a cult under-the-radar following amongst beauty editors, influencers and consumers looking for products with cleaner ingredients and more sustainable packaging. Plenaire has been called “The white T-shirt of the beauty industry - its not fussy or frilly but is super reliable and can be accessorized” (Byrdie Beauty). 

Namrata holds an MBA from The McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, specialising in Global Business Management and Consumer Behaviour. She lives in Fulham with her husband and two children.

Leadership Values

Values
Democracy
Trust
Psychological Safety
Vulnerability
Humility
A Sense of Humour

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What are the key milestones on your path to leadership?

Anxiety is worrying about the future, depression is regretting the past and if you’re happy in the moment, that’s peace. I worked for other people for most of my life. At 39, after having my second child, I was diagnosed with depressive illness and work related stress. I knew it was time to make a big change. 

As far as leadership goes, major milestones :  

1. Overcoming my own negative thinking. Ruminating about the past and catastrophizing about the future made me mentally unwell. There was something about the corporate environment that was triggering for me - it's very personal and it's not to say what is right for me is right for everyone at all. Mental health is never, ever a result of the environment you are in alone, though the environment can certainly be the trigger. It's really more to do with your reaction to an environment. I do look back and wonder just how much time I spent catastrophizing, thinking up negative scenarios in my mind. The key was to figure out how to coach my brain to be present through learned techniques. By focusing on my breathing and appreciating the present moment. Now I have better awareness of the triggers of when I am stressed from external factors. I really just pause, listen to my body and manage emotions very differently. 

2. Staying true to my own values.  A lot of second guessing each other that is sometimes part of typical big company culture as well took its toll. I struggled deeply with finding accessible and modern models of leadership. While collaboration is held up like a shiny object, my own experience was that politics of big organisations make it harder in principle, even with the best intentions. I knew I had made the right choice when I left because I felt free for the first time. I just was never going to be the person that wanted to fit in, perhaps I was when I started out, but I grew out of it. I suppose I had grown in a way that I was looking for more independence, and the ability to assert my own creativity, a license to build from a blank canvas. It felt right. 

3. Developing resilience and mental strength. I learned that I needed to invest in myself and decide to re-learn and focus on what could be holding me back, including my own negative thought patterns. Investing in my own mental health and learning practical techniques have been invaluable. Now, when faced with challenges or someone's lack of belief, I perhaps react quite differently. I generally take a step back, I try to pause, to become the watcher/observer. I step outside of what I need to do so I’m not feeling the emotions, the stress of whatever the circumstance brings. If I hadn’t learnt that technique via CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)  I would be “in it” and perhaps be unable to manage my emotions in different ways. 

While having a big corporate career develops you in some ways, it can also in my opinion really stunt your growth. It's very personal, but beyond a point for me it felt slightly confining.

Critically, people can have their opinions, and you can listen but in the end, you make your own bed and you have to lie in it. Pleasing others or taking people’s opinions on board is certainly valuable, but in the end you have to trust your own instinct as well. 

Without these skills, I don’t think I could really have gone on to work for myself.


What are the key challenges you have faced as a leader?

Developing better skills around assertiveness and negotiating for myself better. I regret that I was never very good at disagreeing with people even when that meant sacrificing my own opinions. Whether it was people telling me that I needed to fit in more, or disagreeing with my ideas because it made them uncomfortable, I learned the hard way that there is only so much that you can do before the gasket comes undone. It's like you fit into sometimes unoriginal thinking that was agreed upon because it  made people feel comfortable rather than explore issues that revealed vulnerabilities and didn't look like everything else. I have since learned how to stand up for myself and the originality of my ideas far better. 

Holding people accountable effectively. Finding the balance between holding people accountable effectively, and developing a relationship where you feel you have the foundation to be honest with them about what has gone well and what hasn't. There is sometimes this undercurrent of blame culture in some organisations wherein you receive subliminal messages around how to be effective as a leader. I am all for holding people accountable effectively. You absolutely need to in order be effective, but it's really how we hold each other accountable that sets the tone for leadership culture in an organisation. And to be able to develop the trust to have the honest conversations, as a foundation, first.  

One of the biggest challenges I faced was being in a matrix style organisation, when more often than not, you are accountable but without being given real responsibility for team members. Being held responsible for the outcome without having any real power is pretty much a recipe for poor mental health. One of the most important things when managing teams is to allow both accountability and responsibility to flow in equal ways. 

With entrepreneurship, the goals change. The biggest challenge now is finding the right people to work with, and convincing them to deliver perhaps with limited resources. In my experience this is an asset anyway. When you work in big teams you sometimes dilute inadvertently, and perhaps lose the sharpness and the focus. That's the difference between managers, and creators. If you manage people you don’t “get your hands dirty” everyday. Creators are more likely to be out there in retail environments, talking to people about what’s going on, absorbing to better understand the cultural narrative. Overtime, I began to understand my own needs better and that a lifelong career in management wasn't as motivating because I couldn't let go of ( for me anyway) the psychologically rewarding part, the thrill, of creating. While most people around me looked forward to having a team to delegate to, like it was a reward - I was the anomaly.


What's the best leadership advice you have been given?

One of the best marketeers that I worked with had a quote: Proposals make progress - don't share problems, develop solutions instead. Be output driven - not process driven. Always ask, ‘what is the outcome not the process? What delivers a tangible result?’ Always begin by proposing a solution, rather than simply stating the challenge. Sounds sort of obvious in theory but in practice, it's harder to do.


What advice do you have for women who are trying to establish themselves as leaders?

My biggest learning was to always trust your gut about people's situations and feelings. The number of times I have walked away from a situation that felt wrong but seemed perfect on paper and then realized later it was the right decision - more times than I can think of.  Chemistry is everything. 

Female intuition is an important thing to hone and respect. I always had a good sixth sense about people, brands, trends but unfortunately many times, I didn’t follow my gut and I should have. I do regret that, but I also take ownership for it because I felt like a lot of the time, I dismissed my own ideas too quickly. I really don't feel that way anymore.  

Anywhere there is a culture of toxic comparison, whether that's in education, family or work, that's going to always exist. It's more about how you react to those comparisons, and how you train your brain to perhaps react in a different way. 

I think I was raised to have an opinion and clearly voice it. Sadly, I feel like that did get dampened in the beginning of my career. I felt that to get ahead I had to be a less authentic version of myself. I’d have to hide my differences so I stopped listening to my intuition - I stopped listening to my gut and it was about people pleasing because to get ahead it seemed like you have to agree with people a lot of the time, even sometimes against your better judgement.

When I left the corporate world it was a big relief to become more authentic to who I am and what I love rather than fitting into a set way of behaving. 

My advice would be listen to your gut and keep hold of your independence. The idea of being like everyone else is very limiting. I think it's actually more important than ever to accentuate your differences and be true to yourself as an individual. Frankly, the idea of fitting in is a tool people use to “feel more comfortable”- but what I have evidenced is that it is in fact, diversity of thought and these differences that lead to innovative ideas and drive disproportionate value.

How would you advise organisations who want to foster diversity and gender equity in leadership?

I would say that it's important for people who make hiring decisions to be the change they want to see around them. As humans our tendency is to associate with and hire people that are similar to us - and that unconscious bias is not always obvious to us, even with the best intentions. So the next time you hire someone, the question isn't- do I like this person, am I comfortable with them? Are they similar to me, the question is - will this person add a fresh perspective to my team, will they push me to think differently, and can their experiences complement mine. 

We can't begin to see real change unless people in senior positions who make these hiring decisions begin to reflect that change, part of that is making hires that challenge you, are different from you, and in some ways force you to reevaluate your opinions. 

Second, your Customers aren’t ignorant. The worst thing you can do is to patronise them or underestimate their intelligence which is what brands sometimes tend to do. People can tell when brands add a black model's picture on their generally white-washed Instagram feeds to “virtue signal” or make a statement about their diversity as a hollow marketing tactic. 

What they forget about is that in practice, their product design perhaps may be less inclusive and the lack of diversity in their workplace in numbers or their inability to collaborate with diverse talent do not support such claims. This is frighteningly true in beauty at the moment. 

Specifically in beauty, Brands need to ask themselves - if the BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) audience is truly important, are they being represented in their senior management? These are tough questions, but very important for any brand to be honest about. If that makes your leadership team uncomfortable, it’s important to be able to sit with that discomfort and be ok with it. Staying comfortable is part of the problem with race inequality. Staying comfortable doesn’t create change.

What gave you the idea for Plenaire? What advice do you have for fellow entrepreneurs?

During my late thirties, I experienced a stress-related burnout and a bout of post-natal depression and I took time off to work on myself. My own subsequent journey with mental health and what I learned during recovery from burnout coupled with the desire to lead a more balanced life was the impetus for me to create Plenaire.

To get the ball rolling, we hired Flamingo, one of the top strategic insights agencies in the UK to conduct ethnographies with engaged skincare users across Los Angeles, New York, and right here in London. We met with young women and their parents across a diverse set of income levels and backgrounds. I personally road-tested over 300 formulations, as well as placed prototypes with friends, family and other volunteers to get feedback and understand what was loved but also what was hated. Basically, anyone who we could recruit in exchange for products, we did.

What’s important is that you have to listen without judgement. 

You could conduct the same research we did and come up with completely different ideas if you went in with rigid preconceptions. We went in and talked to girls and their mothers about skincare and asked them not just what was missing but also what has changed. There was a lot of shame within the category ‘I’m not cool enough, I’m not thin enough, I'm not pretty enough etc.’ We wanted to turn that on its head and explore a new way in - it really felt very dated. 

It was through listening open-mindedly that we really built the brand. Seeing the world through the eyes of these young women was incredibly refreshing. 

In the C-suite of a lot of big companies, it’s pretty one dimensional. They have this idea of a teenager in their head that is from 50 years ago and she’s definitely not that girl anymore! Whereas industries like media, music, technology, fashion I feel like they have kept up to speed with younger people. 

The best business decision we made was hiring Lexicon Branding to help us with our brand mark. I worked directly with David, the legendary founder of Lexicon who is like the father of modern brand naming - he gave me two amazing pieces of advice - he said a great name is a “visual poem”. And second, great names always “feel familiar, yet create anticipation”. So when I am assessing, to use these two criteria. I think we achieved both objectives with our brand name. The minute David presented the name, I found it hard to focus on rest of the presentation- I just knew instantly it was the one. And that if  that mark was available legally, one, I would go to every length to own it and two, if we ended up achieving the trademark, it would probably propel the brand to a good place. It just had cachet and depth simultaneously. 

Plenaire is all about open-mindedness and rethinking things - it comes from the French expression for “ in the open air”.  We want to take a step back and say, ‘are we asking the right questions as opposed to doing what everyone else is? We are far more likely to ask a question than push an agenda or force a point of view. It's all about keeping yourself open to new ideas.

What gave you the confidence to take the leap and start your own business?

I think I always knew I was going to create something I just didn’t know what it was. Since I was sixteen, I’ve been fascinated by people - not products but the cultural, sociological aspects of why people buy products. What do they do with them? What makes one product successful vs. another? 

I did feel at some points like I had “something to say”. It’s almost like an artist when they tell you they can’t sleep because they have to do this painting now. That’s how I felt - I had all these ideas, a compulsion to create. So for example, the idea of Violet Paste came to me because of how I felt when I was young, hormonal and had bad skin. There was this kind of “cover up that spot with some slap and get on with it” mindset. Whereas with Violet Paste we wanted to send the opposite message to young women - that actually, having a blemish is totally normal, so if you have your period and you feel a bit teary - put on some violet paste and your cosiest pyjamas and just go with it…. It's important at that moment to have a license to wallow a little bit and take care of yourself. So putting on some spot paste can be mundane or it can be a recipe to be at your very best, mentally.  The recipe for the paste is deliberately violet and chalky- it's not about hiding or covering up. 

So the confidence thing is key. 

I remember being told, ‘You’re going to get crushed. What chance do you have against multi-million pound companies and their huge media budgets or even, like highly established venture-backed “startups” ?’ That’s a view- it's sort of risk-averse -more the MBA mindset - what are the risks, how do I limit them? An entrepreneur doesn’t think like that. You think try it, test it, learn, feedback, change it, road test it. You create a concept, you put it out there and you keep road testing and changing. It's the principle tech companies use, Lean UX, you create something and keep refining the model in real time. You don't make something and it's going to stay, like static.. I think we will have a Violet Paste 2.0, 3.0 and so on… we have to keep learning from customers and consumers and let go of the notion that we know everything- no business or corporation knows everything - in fact that mindset is what leads to ideas that lack originality. 

Finding the right people- keep going till you do! Over-invest in design. 

The other thing that we got so right, and were super lucky with was that we found the most amazing set of web designers at a small hotshop called Zero Studios on Canal Street in New York to create our digital idea. I had sat through by then 100s of rejections from the biggest and actually, the most arrogant web design firms. Again, like with David, the minute I met Mark, I knew he’d get it. He was really listening to my story and to what I had struggled with to get here to this point. At the end, he was like- “OK, so I am drawn to what you are describing : and I’d like to help you and be a part of creating Plenaire. Let’s try and just make it happen.” 

And they did a phenomenal job of bringing the insight, idea and brand mark to life in the virtual space. They are “radical simplifiers” with a real passion for design and ensured that virtual experience reflected our ethos: calm, ethereal and so Plenaire. They absolutely got the emotion behind the brand in every way. We worked on casting and refining every image and wordsmithing every bit of copy collaboratively, together. And that is the important part of work relationships. Just finding people who view life in the same way as you. 

It was a similar set of circumstances with our graphic design firm. David who named our brand,  recommended we approach Pentagram design, he had worked with them out in San Fransisco. There is a reason why they have created some of the worlds most valuable brand marks. They are experts, and the team we worked developed exceptional design. 

Believe in small. 

To date we have bootstrapped our company through small private loans, and I am really proud of the fact that we put profit first, and that we have limited external investment. It is possible to create value without huge sums of capital, we have proven that with Plenaire. Once we have proof of principle, then it's time to raise funds- but for now we are doing it the old fashioned way and hoping we'll get there over time.

How have you overcome your own inner monologue?

Practice makes perfect - and self awareness is key.

What’s your favourite quote or mantra?

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”