Leap India launched the world’s leading makeup institute Make-up Designory (MUD) in India
In 1959, Harbanslal Gupta founded India Steel Industries. The business soon swelled into one of India's largest steel manufacturing units employing over a 1000 staff and workers across 3 factories with a total production capacity of180,000 tons per annum.
Today known as The India Steel Limited, the conglomerate is run by Ashwin Gupta as executive chairman, Sudhir Gupta as MD but it's Varun Gupta, CFO of the company who stands out.
Having been born into a family of enterprising individuals, Gupta was naturally drawn towards entrepreneurship. Earlier this year, he founded the Leap India Institute along with his wife of 10 years, Priyanka, with the aim to provide its students with vocational skill sets to accelerate their employability across various verticals such as photography, health and wellness, soft skills, makeup, hair care, hospitality.
Gupta's wife, Priyanka, a national level skater, football enthusiast, a salsa teacher and a sketch artist; certainly understands what it means to turn a passion into a profession, and the importance of developing one’s innate talent. The husband-wife duo also own football teams in a local soccer league.
Varun and Priyanka Gupta
Now, Leap India launched the world’s leading makeup institute Make-up Designory (MUD) in India. MUD has collaborated with fashion photographer Rohan Shrestha and his School of Photography to launch a digital drive that celebrates the trials and triumphs of female professionals across genres in India.
It's quite a jump from the stainless steel industry to the beauty industry. On why Gupta chose to dive into the beauty industry he said, "Yes, it's two different worlds, beauty and steel. One's got red lipstick and the other red-hot steel. The leap was made into education since that was the primary focus with Leap India. Along with setting up different vocational fields, we signed makeup. A fun fact is that the worldwide sales of makeup and beauty products are the same as the worldwide sales of steel."
In fact, the globally nearly $500 billion worth industry has been recently fueled by millennials' — who often spend hours on social media platforms watching beauty influencers and bloggers. Memorably, Kylie Jenner, the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan who also peddles her famous makeup like 'Kylie Cosmetics' bagged the cover of Forbes Magazine for being on the path to becoming the youngest 'self-made' billionaire in the world.
Coming back to Gupta's influencer campaign with Rohan Shrestha, he explains that the campaign is a play on the term MUD and the bold call-out ‘You’ve got MUD on your face’. A passion project for the master behind the- lens, the shoot was conducted under the creative direction of Shrestha himself, assisted by young students from the Rohan Shrestha School Of Photography (RSSP). The women were ‘dolled-up’, so to speak; depicting the desire to break away from social conformity, societal expectations and stereotypical gender roles.
Gupta explains, "We were looking to tie up with a renowned makeup academy and wanted to bring in a name that was respected for its emphasis on education. We were luckily introduced to MUD and the US Consulate in Mumbai helped us carry out this deal."
He adds, "Rohan is a close friend and shares the same passion for education as I do. We started the Rohan Shrestha School of Photography with the vision to impart real and first-hand photographic knowledge to our students. Asking Rohan to do the campaign was a natural choice with the vast experience he has in the field, working with the biggest brands. His creativity is what gave birth to this campaign."
Building on its community of professionals in India and brand supporters, MUD collaborated with International hair and makeup artist, Marianna Mukuchyan, whose extensive body of work includes Bollywood films and fashion weeks, aside from several international projects. Mukuchyan created the looks assisted by Saba Khan and other members of the MUD Crew, with styling by Chandni Sareen, who has worked on shoots for popular magazines (Vogue India, Cosmopolitan India, Harper’s Bazaar India, etc.) and brands locally and internationally.
The first leg of the campaign features influencers, such as top fashion blogger and style icon Kayaan Contractor; model and designer Gabriella Demetriades.
Gabriella Demetriades
He shared the brand's influencer marketing strategy saying, "Gabriella and Kayaan, both have similar stories. Both have spent considerable time in foreign countries, but have really made a good name for themselves here in India, and have a great following."
Kayaan Contractor
The endorsers also include celebrity fitness and yoga trainer Anshuka Parwani- the popular pole artist who introduced the craft to India, Aarifa Bhinderwala- a motivational speaker and yogini, Natasha Noel- and brand ambassador for Zumba (dance fitness programme) in India and Sucheta Pal, each of whom have trodden an unconventional road to success.
Gupta is also a travel bug and has visited almost every part of the world. When quizzed on how this moulded his creative vision he shared, "To be very fair, I don't consider myself a creative individual at all. But travelling does give you a different perspective on things. It opens your mind to different horizons. I think for me it helped with the idea of Leap, since a lot of countries have a strong vocational education aspect other than the standard ones, which were missing here. The idea to provide education related to makeup, hair, photography, all under one roof, I feel works very well."
So are there any lessons Gupta has picked up from his gig as CFO at India Steel Works that he finds valuable as the founder of Leap India?
"I think we learn something new every day!" he shares. "But the discipline I learnt from the steel business has definitely helped me set things with Leap India. At the end of it, numbers are numbers and there is no substitute for hard work," he adds signing off.
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