Ready Set Jet
Shalini Vadhera
USA
Shalini Vadhera launched global crowdfunding campaign to give any woman the opportunity to invest as little as Rs.7300 or $100 to own equity in a global beauty brand.
Follow your gut it never lies.
Questions & Answers
Praveen
Tell us about yourself and background about the startup.
Shalini
I am a serial entrepreneur who started my journey at the age of 19 after my father gave me a plane ticket to India and told me to start my own company. Since then I’ve written a best selling book called Passport to Beauty. Launched a number of beauty brands for myself as well as created brands for companies like Paramount Pictures The Baywatch Movie, Turner classic movies, influencers in celebrities and luxury global spa destinations.
In addition to this I also launched a women’s platform in 2015 called Power Beauty Living which I launched globally at the United Nations in 2016 and brought one of my events to 300 diplomat CEOs and country heads.
Because of my long career and beauty and women empowerment I received the Mahatma Gandhi Award at the British House Of Lords in 2017. Shortly thereafter on a trip to India I was greeted by government officials who asked me to find a way to bring impact to the girls of India. It was then I was inspired to create a new brand that used Beauty for a higher purpose which how we begun creating Ready Set Jet.
“Ready Set Jet is a mission driven brand that intersects Innovative cutting edge cosmetics with a community driven Academy taking part of the proceeds to scale under privilege girls and vocationally train them to become the next generation a Beauty Entrepreneurs”.
Praveen
How and when did the “eureka moment” came to you? – When you came up with this idea?
Shalini
After government officials asked me to find a way to bring impact to the girls I saw that Amazon had made a very large investment specifically in the beauty category in India. I realized there was never a better time to bring an innovative brand to India that targeted the needs of the Indian consumer and complimented and celebrated the diverse skin tones across the country. I also spoke with a lot of NGOs and kept hearing the same story over and over about the lack of access to education and opportunity for girls in the slums and villages. That’s when I knew I had to take everything I had done in my career with my women’s platform and through my beauty brands and create a new brand that we could scale globally that and would allow us to scale the impact with a goal of positively impacting 1Million women.
Praveen
How did you come up with the name?
Shalini
My distinct and unique expertise in the beauty industry is global beauty. I have spent years scouring the globe for the worlds best beauty secrets and most of the brands and products I create are all about bringing the world to your doorstep. But I realize there was a new generation that wanted to #Wanderlust The world and didn’t necessarily want to put roots down. They wanted to Airbnb and Uber the world and allow for an inner transformation to happen one destination at a time. “I was on a flight from London to Barcelona and I had a moment looking at the passengers on the plane who were all quite young and thought wow this is Ready Set Jet”. And once we started to create the impact side there was nothing better than the opportunity to Ready Set Jet into your future.
Praveen
What is your WHY?
Shalini
“My why is because I want to create an equal and level playing field for women. As a female Founder and Entrepreneur for over 15 years I know what it feels like to walk in a room and be the only woman in a board room or a funding meeting and be penalized just for being a woman”. After 2020 and seeing even more declining opportunities for women I made it a mission to use Ready Set Jet as a vehicle for global change and to continue to provide opportunities for women to look good feel good and do good.
We even recently launched a global crowdfunding campaign to give any woman the opportunity to invest as little as Rs.7300 or $100 to own equity in a global beauty brand. Women don’t have the risk appetite and making financial investments as men do and that trickles down to the lack of funding available for women. I wanna start to give women the opportunity to take small steps to gaining financial control over their future. You can find more information on this at https://republic.co/ready-set-jet
Praveen
How many founders are in your startup? Can you shortly describe your role in the startup?
Shalini
I am the sole founder in Ready Set Jet I am also the CEO and I focus on all areas of the business with the primary expertise and product development. I have a fantastic team based in Los Angeles, New York, Mumbai, London and Delhi who are working on building Ready Set Jet with me and some of my team have been with me for over 17 years.
Praveen
What is USP for your startup?
Shalini
We are first to market with a revolutionary product technology that allows you to enter change the ends of a beauty Baton to customize your beauty routine to your needs. We also have created luxury hybrid products that are powered by vegan skin care and save you time space and money. In addition to this, we have an Omni directional approach to giving our audience and customers everything they need to live there most powerful and beautiful life. That is why we are in the process of creating the Ready Set Jet online Academy knowing thatPart of the proceeds from the sales of the products and also the courses in the Academy will pay it forward to an underprivileged girl to be skilled through our education.
Praveen
Do you see a global presence for your startup? Which key countries you plan to target?
Shalini
Absolutely I love the world and have always use the world as my global pallet. Currently we are focusing on the US and India market and are in talks for a joint venture in the UK. As we scale we are looking at the Middle East as well as the rest of Asia Pacific and of course Canada and Mexico.
Praveen
What was your biggest fear, prior to starting the journey as a founder? How did you overcome this fear?
Shalini
There’s always a fear as a founder of failure. But what I have learned in doing this for over 15 years is that failure in itself is a great gift and allows for you to learn and become wiser stronger smarter and better. For me personally with Ready Set Jet, I think my biggest fear was wondering if we would be able to launch this in India but we’ve had actually no problem at all. Even with the pandemic we have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by the right partners and people interested in the success of our business.
Praveen
Where do you see your startup in next 5 years?
Shalini
I see is becoming a global brand available in a number of countries with a global Academy and also being able to play in the travel vertical again and ideally being available in duty-free stores across the world. I also see the impact side of our business having a huge positive affect on disenfranchise girls across the world.
Praveen
What will you call success for your startup?
Shalini
That’s a good question! I like to celebrate success not only with the big wins but with the little wins. We are already seeing so much amazing success with our crowdfunding campaign and the effect it has had on women. So many women are making their first investment and then turning around and becoming an ambassador for the brand and being our best sales people. It’s amazing to see we are accomplishing what we set out to do in unique ways and that too so early in our lifecycle.
Praveen
How do you see impact of Covid-19 on your business?
Shalini
Covid was so challenging for so many people. And whenever there is a challenging time you can allow it to make you or break you. I chose to launch during Covid and use that time to learn what our customers feedback was on the products and to make sure we we’re on the right track. What came out of covid19 was a few things:
1) we pivoted from travel to beauty simplified. More women wanted to simplify their routine.
2) we attracted an older demo that had spending power giving us an average order of $85
3) We realize that we needed to broaden The term impact within our company. I had so many girls reach out to me on Instagram saying they had lost their job or had been furloughed and I realized that the impact needed to be much broader than just focusing on underprivileged girls and slums and villages there were a lot of women all over the world that needed the same types of skills professionally and personally. So we added an online Academy for any woman anywhere in the world to level up.
Praveen
If you had to give ONE piece of advice to someone starting out on entrepreneurial journey then what will it be?
Shalini
Follow your gut it never lies.
