M-CAFFEINE Sustainable Business Practice report

END JURY SUBMISSION - ENTREPRENEURSHIP & SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PRACTICIES

REPORT ON A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PRACTICE OF A BRAND INVOLVED IN MANUFACTURING

Submitted by: Brinda | Eesha | Hetvi | Niveditha | Sanjana Menon

END JURY SUBMISSION

REPORT ON A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PRACTICE OF A BRAND INVOLVED IN MANUFACTURING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PRACTICES Submitted by: Brinda S | MFM/21/211 Eesha Rawat | MFM/21/358 Hetvi Parekh | MFM/21/401 Niveditha Vijayanand | MFM/21/243 Sanjana Menon | MFM/21/251 Submitted to: Ms Mukthy S Master of Fashion Management - Batch 2021 - 2023 Date - 16th Decemeber 2021

CONTENTS ABOUT THE BRAND

1- 7

About MCaffeine Mission& Vision Brand Prism MCaffeine's USP Meet the Team Milestones Talk of the Town - Media Coverage

4P'S OF MARKETING Product Line Body Care Face Care Hair Care Gift Kits Shop by Concern Place Price Promotion Influencer Strategy Discount Brand Ambassador

8-21

ENTREPRENEURSHIP PRACTICE ANALYSIS SWOT Analysis Production Process What's brewing at MCaffeine - Success Stories Customer Relationships Triple Bottom Line 4E's of Mcaffeine CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility Entrepreneurial Qualities Business Model Canvas Suggestions for Improvement in Marketing & Sustainable Business Practices Conclusion References

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21- 39

ABOUT THE BRAND

ABOUT MCAFFEINE MCaffeine is India’s very first coffee-infused personal care homegrown brand. It was founded by Tarun Sharma along with Mohit Jain, Vaishali Gupta, and Saurabh Singhal. Mcaffeine was introduced in 2016 with the legal name of PEP Technologies Pvt. Ltd. MCaffeine is a product of curiosity, this happened when the founders were researching ingredients that could be used in personal care products. They realized there was no brand in India working on a similar idea, this is when they decided to tap on this unknown arena.

As of today, Mcaffeine offers a wide range of products in segments like body care, hair care, and face care.

PAGE 01

MISSION

VISION

The belief is to redefine age-old notions with innovative and

MCaffeine aims to be placed on the global map. Caffeine being a

constructive ideas. They want the audience to perceive the brand that

subject of popularity among both national and international

is here to break stereotypes and not associate beauty with color. They

markets, the founders will seek to target the untapped arenas in

aim to make the users of the product feel Bold, Young, and

the global markets.

confident.

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BRAND PRISIM PHYSIQUE

RELATIONSHIP Relatabilty through a Coffee Loving Atmosphere

REFLECTION Coffee Lovers, Skin & Body Care Enthusiasts, Self Care Enthusiasts

Quirky packaged Caffeine related products carefully curated for multiple uses

CULTURE Vegan, Cruelty Free, Effective and 100% Organic Products

INTERNALIZATION

EXTERNALIZATION

The Logo is a Word Type Logo with the words M Caffeine written in Sans Serif Font in the colours grey and turquoise

PERSONALITY

SELF-IMAGE Flawless Skin and Hair achieved through caffeine products

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MCAFFEINE'S USP MCaffeine so far has been tremendously successful in introducing coffee as a part of people’s skincare routine. The brand’s USP is to develop innovative concepts with natural ingredients in the form of personal care. They create the most unique products in terms of looks and constituents of the result.

MCaffeine focuses on two main aspects- product constituents and product design. Recently, the brand launched Caffeine flavored shower gels which were packaged in coffee cups with a nozzle at the top for convenience.

Product Design

Product Packaging

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MEET THE TEAM CORE TEAM BIRTH NATIONALITY

EDUCATION

WORK EXPERIENCE

Tarun Sharma Mumbai, Maharashtra INDIAN Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad B.Tech, Electical Engineering Quetzal Verify Pvt. Ltd MphasiS-an HP Company BOX8 (Poncho Hospitality Private Limited) MCaffeine

Co Founder - Vikas Lachhwani “In the digital world, you can gather data faster and for any new brand, selling online is a great way to get testimony about the products’ quality. Those initial adopters will become champions of the product,” says Vikas Co-founder, MCaffeine.

CORE TEAM BIRTH

Founder - Tarun Sharma “We were leaving our previous roles and were wondering what to do next. We discussed several ideas and homed in on building a personal care brand,” says Tarun, Co-founder, MCaffeine.

He says that the reason they chose personal care was that there weren’t many new age brands for younger consumers today.

NATIONALITY

EDUCATION

WORK EXPERIENCE

Vikas Lachhwani Mumbai, Maharashtra INDIAN Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur University of Wisconsin- Milaukee MUP, Urban Planning, MSTransportation Engineering, PHD-Marketing

Research Assistant Consultant, Mu Sigma Founder and Managing Director, Trusanga Senior Vice President, Operations and Growth, Zoomcar Director and Founder, Mcaffeine

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MILESTONES Prior to setting up Mcaffiene boththe Cofounders were working at different retail set ups.

This idea led to the beginning of the story of mCaffeine

ACCIDENT 2015

2010-2015

2015

WORK EX.

IDEA GENERATION

The founder met with an accident and had a sore eye.

He put a brewed but lukewarm green tea bag on his eyes to reduce the puffiness.

IT WORKED!

PETA certified on the 1st November, 2020 on the occasion of World Vegan Day. It is a cruelty free and vegan brand.

Got in three talented celebrities as its ambassadors in 2021- Radhika Apte, Shruti Hassan and Vikrant Massey Won the Nykaa Femina Beauty Awards for Naked and Raw coffee body scrub, 2020

The brand was launched.

By launching two products under each category

EXTENSIVE RESEARCH

FUND RAISER

FUTURE PLANS

2015

2020

2021- Present

2016

ACHIEVEMENTS

THE BRAND There was an extensive 9 months of research and development

2020

Raised a total of $5.8m in funding over four rounds till September, 2020

They are planning to go to international markets in terms of product reach.

They also are planning to introduce new ways which can lead them to be a global skin care type

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MEDIA COVERAGE

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4P's OF MARKETING

BODY CARE

FACE CARE

HAIR CARE

GIFT RANGE

BY CONCERN

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BODYCARE

PAGE 09

FACE CARE PAGE 10

HAIR CARE PAGE 11

GIFT KITS PAGE 12

SHOP BY CONCERN

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PLACE - ONLINE M Caffeine is an E-Commerce Brand. They mainly sell their products through their official website and have showcased on multiple other ECommerce platforms such as Myntra, Amazon, Nykaa, Purplle Big Basket and Trell Shop to name a few

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DISTRIBUTION

ONLINE

PRICE MCaffeine’s pricing is quite moderate in comparison to other personal care brands from India. Their pricing strategy is mainly set in accordance to the ease of purchase by their target audience, which is young millennials. Secondly, they base their prices also on the terms of the product design and how unique it is. MCaffeine prices the products in a way that they are accessible to a larger audience.

For eg they have products starting from Rs 199 ranging to Rs 645 in body care.

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PROMOTION M caffeine drives more 99% of its sale from online platforms, with nearly 60% from various e commerce marketplaces, 35-39% from the official website and 1% from its offline channel via the e commerce marketplaces. This clearly indicates that Mcaffeine depends completely on online sales and therefore adopts various strategies to grab attention.

The two main strategies are Influencing marketing and hosting discounts and sales. The next strategy is a pretty common one and most businesses do depend on it, are the in app pop ads. They also generate decent traffic from such ads.

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INFLUENCER STRATEGY

MCaffeine has followed the simplest of all the marketing strategies,i.e influencer strategy.

They have had a wide range of influencers on board, with followers ranging from 2lakh to 20 lakh. Every time Mcaffeine launches with a new collection they aggressively promote the products on social media handles via these influencers. A different brief is provided to influencers depending on the type of message they want to send across. They focus

Source:BuzzinContent

on hiring one agency that helps them get 100-200 micro-influencers on board.

The graph represents the growth of MCaffeine in the year 2020

The graph represents MCaffeine;s growth on social media in the year 2020

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DISCOUNTS MCaffeine is also known for the number of promotional content it gets out on the internet.

Their focus is to grab attention. MCaffeine holds a huge sale every 1-2 weeks where the prices are slashed down.

They frequently hold minor sales where customers are rewarded with free testers and goodies.

This discount strategy is not only limited to their channel but also to different marketplaces. For example, Mcaffeine has newly launched product offers on NYKAA and amazon as well. They also extend the influencer strategy into providing discounts by the influencers.

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BRAND AMBASSADOR In an interesting new development, mCaffeine is collaborating with three of India's biggest millennial icons and talented celebrities - Radhika Apte, Shruti Hassan, and Vikrant Massey - for their latest campaign as their new age 'brand believers.' The brand film seeks to empower the country's Gen Z audience while communicating MCaffeine's 'Addicted To Good' proposition in a distinctive yet relatable way.

The idea stems from the human realisation that we are essentially creatures of habit who prefer repetition. A single good habit can frequently lead to another, thereby initiating a chain of goodness. MCaffeine, armed with all the goodness of caffeine, hopes to get its users similarly 'Addicted to Good.' The three ambassadors will share the goodness of caffeine with everyone - as well as the good that the brand does in general - as they represent the young and energetic go-getters for whom the brand's products are designed.

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MCAFFEINE - ADDICTED TO GOOD CAMPAIGN

Scan Code to Watch Video

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP PRACTICE ANALYSIS

SWOT ANALYSIS STRENGTH Pioneer of caffeinated personal care brand in India Targeting the young and aspiring millennials, which constitutes a huge chunk of the population 100% vegan and cruelty-free brand, PETA certified Follow the policy of Zero Plastic Footprint Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved, made safe and dermatologically tested, no usage of Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), parabens, silicones or mineral oils in the products Thoughtful product and package design Online first brand Gender-neutral products Have their own website. They also sell on various other platforms like Amazon, Nykaa, and Flipkart.

Application tutorials for their products

WEAKNESS Not having an omnichannel presence currently Offline advertising is very limited Packaging of their hair care products, especially the hair oil can be modified with an applicator attached so that the application process becomes easier No transparency in terms of the product manufacturing

OPPORTUNITIES The leftover coffee beans can be used to dye the fabric for the pouches they offer in their gift kits or even the ribbons they used in packing the gift kits Mcaffeine can collaborate with various well established coffee chains throughout the country like Subko coffee, Blue Tokai, Thirdwave coffee to come up with limited edition giftboxes or to sell their products Can launch offline in premium chemist stores throughout the country Heavy advertising in tier 2 and tier 3 cities as majority of their clientele are from tier 1 cities Can offer travel sized products Can have more product offerings like Green Tea face toner, Green Tea face mask, chocolate and coffee flavoured lipbalm

THREATS Competitors of Mcaffeine like Mama Earth and Plum goodness amongst others offer more products They are not very transparent with their process which may lead to losing customers in the long run They are more product-centric than consumer-centric.

They are not well versed with social media which may lead to a lack of interest of consumers

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PRODUCTION PROCESS Mcaffeine aims at bringing to the customers that makes skin-care pampering, an unforgettable experience with the best ingredient-'caffeine' and embody the millennial philosophy of “natural first" as a cruelty-free label in which the products are planned, manufactured, designed, and processed in India.

The brand strongly believes that research is paramount. Hence, they manufacture their products after doing an extensive research of the ingredients and view product development as an important practice to follow to address the needs and concerns of the people from the modern lifestyle.

All the products of mcaffeine are produced as paraben-free and 100% organic ingredients are used in them, which undergo a clinical and dermatological testing regime.

Having a full-fledged R&D lab, the backend works as an iron triangle wherein at the front, the promoters of the team make market and product brief which then goes to the R&D lab which then formulates the products, after that the formulation goes to the manufacturer so that they have the clear ownerships of the triangle points and then the final products come to the warehouse.

MCaffeine works with multiple contract manufacturers based on their strength.

All the formulations of caffeine products are FDA approved. Over and above they do close to 27 types of tests on the products which are clinical in nature like temperature, microbial and dermatological tests.

Once the product clears these parameters it is then launched in the market.

Their first batch of nearly 800 kg of products, which they formulated, included face wash, body butter, hair cream, face cream, and shower gels.

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WHAT'S BREWING @ MCAFFEINE ? ( Success factors) The brand tasted some early success, serving half a million consumers and aiming for sales of nearly Rs. 100 crore in 2019.

IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT TREND:

GOOD CONSUMER CONNECTION:

UNIQUE APPROACH:

They started researching lifestyles of the modern people and realized that caffeine was one of the strongest trends in the country, especially among the millennials.

This was the first major step towards their success.

They stay in touch with their consumers on a regular basis, thereby, creating the best for them with the best of the ingredients. Hence, having a good consumer connection helped them rise through tough times like the covid turbulence, and their growth increased about twoand-a-half times.

It can be said that innovation has always been at the forefront and has been well mapped keeping in mind, their consumer’s needs and demands. They keep up with the modern developments on personal and skincare and drive towards a unique approach of incorporating them in their products.

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TARGET MARKETING: Targeted marketing played a role in the turnaround when the company persuaded customers that its offerings were focused on tea, coffee, and chocolate, their favorite interests.

THE CULT STATUS: Mcaffeine has created a strong impression in the mindsets of the people and one thing the customers admire the most in the brand is that they believe in accepting themselves as to how they are and wanted people to choose confidence over color and to see skincare as a selfcare necessity. They vowed not to promote insecurities in the form of selling fairness creams.

RESEARCH AND DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING:

So, the brand started to see lots of positive responses from customers, which created a valuable status for them in the market and was also one of the most important factors for their success.

In this tech-driven market, customers keep learning more about new products before they make a purchase. It’s the customer’s choice but the brand is observed to be ready with all shades of content for which, they do full-fledged research based on customer's data and follow better datadriven marketing in which the brand's narrative quotient of content is really high. This played a vital role in attributing to their success quotient

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CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS Customer relationships are important for mcaffeine, important because the customer's mindsets keep changing whenever they come to know about the existence of new brands. Henceforth, the brand explores in any many areas as they can to maintain valuable relationships with the customers and to make them aspire and also use products that communicate their personality. Mcaffeine's team build interesting contests and challenges for our consumers to engage with us. They have analysed that, that kind of content brings in 10x better engagement than multiple other activities.

DIRECT RELATIONSHIP WITH CUSTOMERS Mcaffeine believes in connecting directly and the closest with the customer, which helps to stay connected and know the pulse of the dynamically growing FMCG space. Every customer who calls for inquiries talks to the founder directly. This helps in getting the work done efficiently as customers share with them what they want and that enables the brand in driving the product line towards the right way.

SOCIAL MEDIA- AS A KEY TOOL They use social media as the most important tool to grow their business, where they are exposed to a lot of data about the customers, their likes, dislikes, and their concerns. They are very much active on Instagram in which they not only promote their products but also engage well with the customers, addressing general haircare, skincare problems in an attractive way which actually creates an interest in people to view and understand it.

BURN THE SHADE CARD In a world that is offering fairness creams and skin-whitening products, Mcaffefine wants people to promote confidence in skincare. Their recent campaign- "Burn the shade card" aims to educate people to be confident in their own skin and feel beautiful being themselves. The brand is aiming to educate around 25 million people next year to overcome such insecurities.

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REWARDS: They retain their customers by offering them rewards in the form of bean coins for placing an order, following them on Instagram, and even celebrating birthdays. This encourages people to buy more products and creates a better customer engagement for the brand.

PRODUCT USAGE To enable ease of application of the products, Mcaffeine offers a various tutorials to show the product usage. The application process is either shown through videos or in a textual format to cater to people who prefer one format over the other.

SEASONAL GIFTING The brand gives special focus in engaging with the customers when it comes to their favorite celebrations like valentines season, Diwali, etc. where they sell their product through famous online distribution channels like LBB, Buzzfeed, PopXo, Times food, etc.

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4 Years YOUNG!

ONLINE BLOGS

Embarking their inspirational journey of completing 4 years in business, they designed

Mcaffeine also has an online blog platform in their Instagram

special filter in instagram to celebrate the bold, young and confident soul in each and

channel, where they post different content right from skincare, quick

every customer who supported the brand throughout the brand's journey s far. The filter

ways to get ready with their products to great reads and so on.

is available in their Instagram feed, where anyone can open it, use the filter and post it on their stories to get featured, which is yet another an interesting and a more engaging way to increase their social media traffic.

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TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE

SOCIAL: They are committed to building a great brand and offering their customers products that let them feel great about their purchases.

They are also committed to listening to you and to evolving.

They build an interactive base with their customers through their product They also believe in gender neutrality and no discrimination amongst humans which is that they offer products for all skin types.

They say "You are Bold, Young and Confident."

SOCIAL

ENVIRONMENT: They are a 100% Vegan & Cruelty-free, Peta certified brand.

They have achieved Zero Plastic Footprint and have pledged to eliminate plastic pollution with a Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).

Authorized Recycler to recycle more plastic than they use.

ECONOMY

ENVIRONMENT

They make premium world-class products using Coffee, Green Tea, and Chocolate.

They use natural fibers for making bathing accessories They use leftover coffee waste for making packaging

ECONOMYMCaffeine is an affordable brand irrespective of the premium quality products that are being made.

Consumers have the freedom to choose any product because they use high-quality ingredients and pocket-friendly budgets in an ethical environment.

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Emotions

Efficacy

At the end, we trigger emotion in the consumer's mind.

Multiple emotions under the umbrella of Addicted to Good.

Building incredibly effective products which are good and great for our consumer's physiological needs.

Experience We are not selling a commodity. We build experience in each and every layer of physiological and psychological aspects of the brand - product, packaging, usability, etc

4 E's

Ethos Making highly efficacious products with the futuristic ethos of clean Labels ( Vegan and Natural ingredients, Peta certified, zero plastic footprints, free from all harmful ingredients ). Not just this, we also have "in-tangible" ethos like gender neutrality and confidence over color.

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CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WHY CSR? Corporate Social Responsibility plays a vital role in the functioning of Mcaffeine and is typically organized in a manner that empowers them to be and act in a socially responsible way. It’s a form of self-regulation that can be expressed in initiatives or strategies, executions as well.

TYPES OF CSR COVEREDCorporate social responsibility is traditionally broken into four categories: environmental, philanthropic, ethical, and economic responsibility.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSILBILTY

PHILANTHROPIC RESPONSILBILTY

ETHICAL RESPONSILBILTY

ECONOMIC RESPONSILBILTY

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ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSILBILTY The body care accessories like loofah and bath glove have been made with 100% all-natural plant fiber, Ramie.

They use paper packaging for packing combo offer and even sell their bean soaps to reduce carbon and plastic emissions in the environment.

They have pledged to eliminate their plastic pollution by coming together with a Central Pollution Control Board(CPCB)They have earned 76375 plastic credits by offsetting equal kilograms of plastic.

They are an absolutely vegan and nature-friendly brand.

They source absolutely natural-friendly materials. All the products are made keeping in mind Coffee, Green Tea, and Chocolate.

Other than that they make use of natural fibres .

80% of their products are made of glass thus eliminating the use of plastic.

The leftover coffee waste after the process of manufacturing is used in the product design. The coffee cup used as the packaging for body wash has been made using leftover coffee waste.

Their company in the past few years has accomplished "ZERO PLASTIC FOOTPRINT"

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PHILANTHROPIC RESPONSILBILTY The Philanthropic responsibility refers to MCaffeine aiming to actively make the world and society a better place.

AT MCAFFEINE It interacts personally with its customers to understand how better can they serve them or how can they enhance the quality of its products.

Being a direct consumer-centric brand it targets all its communication on social media via Instagram. They occasionally ask questions, put customer feedbacks and videos on their official Instagram page.

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ETHICAL RESPONSILBILTY The company believes in confidence in overall skin and body biases. As the company mentions, "Redefining the age-old notions of beauty associated with color, we never sell insecurities. We have vowed not to make fairness products."

There are several certifications done by Mcaffeine to ensure that their products are chemical free and ethically produced as listed below-

Making it Caffienated and Safe Our safety is their priority. They have been making sure that they follow the Covid guidelines for customer safety.

They make sure they Daily sanitize facilities Cashless & contactless deliveries Use of mask, gloves, shoe caps, and headcovers Social distancing

All products made under this brand are certified cruelty-free and vegan

by PETA.

All their products are gender-neutral that means irrespective of the person being a male or female they can make use of the skincare products by understanding their skin type

Apart from making ethical and sustainable choices in terms of the product, they also make sure that they choose brand ambassadors who fit well into the brand identity. The brand has hence thoughtfully chosen Radhika Apte, Vikrant Massey, and Shruti Hassan as they believe in ' natural and no-filtered skin'.

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ECONOMIC RESPONSIBILITY The company provides an exciting range of Caffeinated products for young and aspiring millennials.

Therefore while deciding the price of each and every product they kept their target audience in mind. The products are high in quality and are budget-friendly too, thus gaining more popularity amongst the youth.

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ENTREPRENUERIAL QUALITIES Tarun Sharma and Vikas Lachhwani are Sustainable Entrepreneurs and have been passionately using ethical and ecological procedures to build the brand identity.

They can be further placed into three different categories namelyProfit Social Entrepreneur Transformational Social Entrepreneur Global Social Entrepreneur And on this basis listed below are a few qualities of Tarun Sharma and Vikas Lachhwani are -

CREATIVE The idea of using coffee as a basic ingredient for skincare products was very rare and unique.

The way the products are designed/packaged like the bathing bar which looks like a massive coffee bean and the body wash which comes in the coffee tumbler makes the product as well as the packaging creative.

RISK TAKER They had the heart to risk their fundings in the Indian market with the concept of innovating products from coffee and the risk being that the Indian market was an unexplored market in that case as Indians are used to herbal products but not coffee.

PASSIONATE They were passionate to take their understanding and likeness towards coffee to a global level. Every product that has been made by the company can be bifurcated according to the different types of coffees that exist.

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ORGANIZED They were extensively involved in the research and development of the company making sure that the launch of the products are planned in a systematic manner. Apart from that, he has set milestones for every 5 years which he wants to achieve.

OPEN- MINDED APPROACH The brand has a gender neutral approach and promotes all skin types which is generally not how all skin care brands think.

The most appreciable point is that irrespective of them being from skincare they only want to promote a healthy skin but not insecurities. and fairness products.

STRONG SENSE OF BASIC ETHICS AND INTEGRITY The brand carries strong ethical values which help them maintain sustainable practices within the company. They make sure that they don't make use of any harmful or strong chemical in their process and have got their products certified for the same too.

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BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS - MCAFFEINE KEY PARTNERS Company Management Tarun Sharma - Co Founder & CEO Vikas Lacchwani - Co Founder Saurabh Singhal - Head of Supply Chain Vaishali Gupta - Head of Marketing Mohit Jain - Head of ECommerce Brand Ambassadors

KEY RESOURCES Personal Brand Natural Ingredients Natural Recipies Caffeine Extracts Ethically Sourced and Cruelty Free Raw Materials.

COST STRUCTURE Research & Development Manufacturing Sourcing Distribution Website Hosting Marketing & Advertising

KEY ACTIVITIES Sale of Beauty Products made from Caffeine Development & Manufacture of Products made from caffeine.

Research and development of new recipes that can be used to make new caffeine flavored beauty products Quality check of production practices to ensure 100% Vegan and Cruelty Free Production

PRACTISED CSR They source absolutely natural-friendly materials.

Their company in the past few years has accomplished "ZERO PLASTIC FOOTPRINT" They use 80% glass packaging They are certified cruelty free and vegan by PETA They make sure products are well formulated after an extensive R&D and have balance.

They are known to produce 100% vegan and natural-based face moisterizers.

Personally connected with customers The welfare of customers and labor.

Their products are FDA approved, Made Safe & dermatologically tested, with no SLS, parabens, silicones & mineral oils.

VALUE PROPOSITION Caffeine Flavored Products Ethically Sourced and Prepared Vegan, Cruelty-Free, PETA Approved, Organic Products Creative Packaging Well researched and developed products packaged as solutions for specific skin, hair and body concerns

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS Young and aspiring millennials.

Gender Neutral Made for all Skin Types For all "CAFFEINATED PEOPLE"

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS CHANNELS Rewards for product purchases and newsletters.

Direct relationship with customers Social media as main communication tool about their products and skincare.

Notable campaigns to uplift confidence on skin and color.

Seasonal gifting Online blogs Special filters in instagram

Online Website Online ECommerce Portals Offline - MBO's such as NewU, Health & Glow

REVENUE STREAMS Online & Offline Sales Fund Raising

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SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT IN MARKETING & SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PRACTICES 1. Nowadays, the millennials are more interested to see 'Behind the Scenes of the products they purchase, which includes the raw materials, the manufacturing process, and packaging. Short snippets of it on their social media. can encourage a bond and transparency and trustworthiness between the brand and the customers.

2. They could come up with pop-up stores in established malls, especially when they are about to introduce new products, because, it gives a chance for them to test their market for the product. This gives them a clear understanding of the rate of likes and dislikes on the products and helps in a better way of marketing.

3. Since they don't have any stand-alone stores, they could come up with some in main urban cities, which can help them set up their offline channel and gain more footfalls and reach a wider range of audiences.

4. Collaborative efforts with established coffee chains on exclusive products or gift kits can help them widen their customer segment.

5. They can explore more on B2B channels, i.e, by teaming up with other forms of businesses to promote their products.

6. The ideal opportunity would be to team up with salons as they have a wide customer segment that is concerned about beauty and skincare. This is a very good opportunity for Mcaffeine to reach the right market in a more seamless manner.

7. It's well evident that the brand is known for its caffeine content. Keeping this in mind, they can widen their product range to healthcare as well, where they can produce supplements that have caffeine which has several health benefits and promote the products with famous fitness freaks and lifestyle bloggers.

8. They can create a user-friendly app through which customers can shop products along with lots of personalized content, avail online consultation services for skincare and haircare, 9. They can collaborate with notable celebrities and fashion designers like Dia Mirza, Kriti Tula (founder of Doodlage) to name a few, who are the key environmentalists in the urban society to address the importance of sustainability and cruelty-free production practices.

10. Apart from using the leftover coffee material in the packaging of the product, it can be used and marketed as Natural Shoe Deodorizer Spray.

11. They can create fabrics from the leftover green tea waste in the production process and use them for packaging.

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CONCLUSION They are India’s first​caffeinated personal care brand with an exciting range of Caffeinated products for young and aspiring millennials.

It is a digital-first brand that plans to start offline soon and also expand internationally.

The company believes in confidence in overall skin and body biases. As the company mentions, Redefining the age-old notions of beauty associated with color, we never sell insecurities. We have vowed not to make fairness products.

They are 100% Vegan & Cruelty-free, Peta certified brand.

They have been recognized as a promising and most loved brand by The Economic Times and Grazia Their Naked and Raw coffee body scrub has in particular drawn a lot of attention and won some awards.

They plan to launch more products in the future.

The company follows the triple bottom line- Economy, Social and Environmental factors through the elimination of plastic, using natural fibers for manufacturing certain items. They look after the welfare of the users as well as the labor.

They plan on 'acquisition of existing brands' rather than extending their brand and thus gaining a larger share.

Their packaging is thoughtful and well designed.

It is a gender-neutral brand As the products have been made keeping in mind the young and aspiring millennials, the ambassadors chosen for the brand reflect the same.

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REFERENCES https://www.instagram.com/mcaffeineofficial/?hl=en https://www.mcaffeine.com/ https://www.buzzincontent.com/story/mcaffeine-opts-for-simplest-and-basic-influences-marketing-strategy-to-promote-newproduct-range/ https://blog.letsventure.com/insights/best-practices-for-content-and-influencer-marketing/ https://www.indianretailer.com/article/retail-people/trends/will-mcaffeine-be-using-a-different-retail-strategy-in-internationalmarkets.a7451/ https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/mcaffeine-bets-on-millennials-to-make-a-mark-in-personal-care-market119062300803_1.html https://yourstory.com/2017/01/mcaffeine/amp https://yourstory.com/2017/01/mcaffeine/amp https://www.nextbigbrand.in/mcaffeine-a-brand-with-youth-caffeine-at-their-heart/ https://www.forbesindia.com/article/30-under-30-2021/mcaffeine-disrupting-personal-care-with-caffeine/66399/1 http://bwdisrupt.businessworld.in/article/-Our-Focus-Is-To-Build-The-Brand-First-And-Put-It-On-The-World-Map-Tarun-SharmaFounder-And-CEO-mCaffeine/07-10-2021-407650/ https://www.organicfacts.net/mcaffeine.html

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Brinda

Eesha

Hetvi

Niveditha

Sanjana Menon