Meet HealthifyMe’s musician CEO

Hello Reader,

As the IPO of Tracxn Technologies nears, investor interest in the market intelligence platform is at a high. The company secured a little more than Rs 139 crore from anchor investors ahead of the IPO scheduled for October 10 as it looks to raise another Rs 309 crore.

Meanwhile, Wall Street banks have slashed their expectations for third-quarter earnings of big US companies by $34 billion over the past three months. This signals a dark outlook for the near future as global recession looms large.

ICYMI: A person in Manchester, UK was left stunned when Uber attempted to charge $39,317 (around Rs 32 lakh) for just a 15-minute ride.

Well, is inflation to blame?

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Meet HealthifyMe’s musician CEO
• Driving diversity in sales
• SUGAR Cosmetics’ a-ha moment

Here’s your trivia for today: Where is Asia’s largest spice market located?

Music

Meet HealthifyMe’s musician CEO

Tushar Vashisht, Co-founder and CEO of HealthifyMe, is an entrepreneur by day and a musician by night. A composer since the age of 18, he was part of an acapella group at the University of Pennsylvania and hasn't stopped composing music.

"I’d like to believe that entrepreneurship is my heart and mind together, but music is my soul,” he says. 

Musical journey:

• He performed Cry For Peace, an original by him, on national television on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. 
• Along with guitarist Raghu Ramasubramanian, he jointly composed and produced two singles, Kahaani and Ud Ja Re.
• While legends such as Abida Parveen, Bhemsen Joshi and Pandit Jasraj are his inspiration, he has been looking up to Arijit Singh and Hariharan too.

Woman Entrepreneur

Driving diversity in sales

October is now marked as Women in Sales month and Chitra Singh looks at it as a great opportunity. She is the founder of Sales Womentoring, India's first women-only sales-focused community.

The platform focuses on increasing the talent pipeline of women in sales and addressing the issue of women salespersons opting out around mid-carrier.

Helping women step up:

• The Sales Womentoring platform now has the support of 30 mentors from around the world.
• The community offers membership plans for group mentoring and power mentoring.
• The programmes are open to all women, irrespective of their occupations, and do not have eligibility criteria.

The Turning Point

SUGAR Cosmetics’ a-ha moment

Before founding SUGAR Cosmetics, Kaushik Mukherjee and Vineeta Singh ran a beauty subscription service called Fab Bag. They saw a trend of Indian millennial women who had started wearing makeup regularly as a feel-good accessory.

“I thought makeup had to be long lasting. Even if a woman travels by public transport or on polluted roads, her makeup should stay,” Vineeta says.

The making:

• While running Fab Bag, the team amassed 200,000 customers who shared their preferences, skin problems, and likes/dislikes.
• This led SUGAR to launch a foundation in 22 shades suited to all Indian skin tones.
• It also launched India’s first powder lipstick, which stocked out in two weeks.  

News & updates

• Steering clear: Electric automaker Rivian informed customers that it is conducting a voluntary recall of all 13,000 vehicles it has delivered due to a loose fastener in the steering. This comes after the company faced backlash for raising prices as well as laying off 6% of its workforce this year.
• Pink bling: An extremely rare “fancy vivid pink” diamond has set a world record for the highest price per carat for a diamond sold at auction. Sotheby's Hong Kong sold the 11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star diamond for over $57 million.
• Music memory: According to a research paper, music rhythm game Rhythmicity improved short-term memory in adults. It uses visual clues to train participants to play a rhythm on a tablet, which can benefit performance on a non-musical task, the researchers found.

What you should watch out for

• Indian men’s cricket team will face South Africa in the second ODI in Ranchi.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to declare Modhera in Gujarat as India’s first solar-powered village.

Where is Asia’s largest spice market located?

Answer: Khari Baoli in Delhi is the largest spice market in Asia. Operating since the 17th century, the wholesale grocery market sells a variety of spices, nuts, herbs, and food products.

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