Kaushik Mukherjee is the Co-founder & COO of SUGAR Cosmetics - India's fastest-growing color-cosmetics brand that is currently valued at USD ~500 million . A cult favourite amongst millennials and Gen Z audience, the brand has rapidly scaled on the back of its content-first marketing strategy on Instagram (2.5M+ followers), YouTube (1M+ followers) and other social media platforms.

Over a decade ago, Kaushik graduated from BITS Pilani with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering with honours and postgraduate degree from IIM Ahmedabad in MBA/PGDM Business Management. He went on to work at the Investment Banking division, Financial Institutions Group at Goldman Sachs in the New York office. In 2010, he moved to McKinsey & Co. Mumbai office and assisted large-scale organizations across Asia, Europe and Africa in strategy and operations engagement. Kaushik was the co-founder and managing director of FAB BAG, India's largest beauty subscription service. After the successful venture with the women-centric venture, Kaushik co-founded SUGAR Cosmetics in 2015 with a single-point agenda of creating world-class makeup products with high-pigmentation that specifically catered to the Indian skin tone.

What stands out about Kaushik is his leadership skills and unshakeable confidence; his work is marked by meticulous attention to detail and consistent high quality. Under his leadership, the company has scaled faster than any other and is now one of the top 3 cosmetics brands in terms of sales contribution in the country. It has a physical presence of over 45,000+ retail touchpoints across 550+ cities and has a digital community of five million beauty enthusiasts across all platforms with its own website and mobile app getting more than a million unique visitors every month.

With his vision and mentorship, the brand has garnered extensive recognition and won numerous accolades over the last couple of years. In 2019, it won ‘The Economic Times’ - Promising Brand of the Year’; ‘Entrepreneur Awards’ Retail Startup of the Year’ and in the following years of 2020 and 2021 the brand has won ‘Images Retail Awards’; ‘Vogue Beauty Festival Awards 2021 in the best of makeup everyday warriors category’; ‘India Today’s Next 100 Entrepreneurs list’ along with ‘most trusted brand of the year award 2021’ and ‘most preferred brand of the year award 2021.'

As an esteemed voice in the industry and as an industry veteran in digital marketing and brand building, Kaushik has spoken on multiple forums and summits about how the startup leveraged social media influencers to build a formidable brand. On a personal note, he is also a fitness buff. Kaushik and his wife are also the first Indian couple to finish the grueling long-distance Ironman triathlon in Austria (3.8km swim, 180km cycle, 42.2km run) – which is widely regarded as the toughest single-day sporting event in the world