Tarun Sharma

CO-FOUNDER & CEO, MCAFFEINE

Tarun has his feet set firmly in today’s competitive environment which is evident by the fact that he has spearheaded three successful organizations. His endeavours include heading Business at Box8; one of the largest food delivery chains with 60 outlets in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore. The man behind the Setup and scaling up the entire business from scratch over 2 years while managing over 600+ team members across verticals. The man is not just a connoisseur in the business world but in the tech world as well. His tenure at Mphasis, a sister concern of HP gave him a chance to root himself in tech. Tarun’s excellence in every field speaks volumes of how he has scripted the evolution and helped draw a veneer outline of brands he’s had his share work with. Aside from this, stand-up comedy is what excites him, and he enjoys being on the stage once in a while.

In mere 6 years, Tarun Sharma with his strongest team has built mCaffeine that today dominates with 4 major product categories across Face Care, Hair Care, Body Care and Lip Care, making it as the world’s largest single ingredient brand. Confidence over Colour and Addicted To Good are the simple thoughts that have guided the development of mCaffeine in India’s beauty and personal care industry. Inner beauty trumps everything else was an idea that Tarun Sharma, Vikas Lachhwani, Vaishali Gupta, Mohit Jain, and Saurabh Singhal were absolutely convinced about. While conceiving the identity and character of the brand, they also laid out strict boundaries for it. With the market full of brands that makes you look down upon yourself, Tarun Sharma with the team has made sure mCaffeine as a brand will never sell insecurities and that’s what makes it today as the most loved millennial brand today.

mCaffeine was founded by Tarun Sharma, Vikas Lachhwani, Vaishali Gupta, Mohit Jain, and Saurabh Singhal when millennial India craved for products it could identify with. It took this need gap to heart, and by placing foremost importance on customer centricity – united the holy trinity of its audience’s love for coffee, need for identity and thrill of innovation – for a smart slice of its customers wallet. Inspiring with his entrepreneurship skills, Tarun Sharma swears by 4 Key Strategies – Efficacy, Ethos, Experience and Emotion to make mCaffeine a customer-centric brand that further emphasizes gender neutrality.

mCaffeine’s portfolio comprises around 90 products in multiple categories, the major ones being Body Care, Face Care, Hair Care & Lip Care. The brand further plans to add 20 more new launches to it. All of these best selling products are available on the brand’s D2C website www.mcaffeine.com/ The products are also available across major E-commerce platforms like Amazon, Nykaa, and Flipkart. In a span of just 6 years, mCaffeine has sold more than 20 million products, serving more than 18000 pin codes across India. It’s present in more than 10000 offline stores across India, and has breached the offshore market with its global presence in 12 countries. mCaffeine is already the world’s largest single-ingredient brand, it wishes to amplify its reputation by creating and selling the best caffeine-infused care, and dominate the market, in the years to come.

Prayag Mohanty

PRINCIPAL – BPC, FIRESIDE VENTURES

Prayag is passionate about investing and scaling consumer businesses. He has been investing in the early-stage ecosystem since 2013, and been involved as an investor with BiryaniByKilo, Bluestone, and Vinculum.

He has been a Principal at IvyCap Ventures where he focused on consumer and enterprise technology startups. He has been an Investment Banker with SBI Capital Markets, as well as a software developer for Infosys Technologies.

At Fireside, Prayag works closely with MamaEarth, AlphaVector, Yogabar, Slurrp Farm, Wellbeing Nutrition, Smytten, and The Bakers Dozen.

Prayag holds an MBA from XIMB and a BE(Computer) from Pune University

Manish Chowdhary

CO-FOUNDER, WOW SCIENCE

Suyash Saraf

CO-FOUNDER, DOT & KEY SKINCARE