‘I am not an empowerer of women, I am a beneficiary,’ says CK Kumaravel of Naturals, which operates over 1,000 salons
At SheSparks 2026, the co-founder of Naturals Salon & Spa said the most powerful thing a man can do for women's entrepreneurship is to step aside, and mean it.
Walking into a room full of women leaders, CK Kumaravel, Co-founder and CMD of Naturals Salon & Spa, declared, “Who am I to empower women?”
The audience at SheSparks, YourStory’s summit celebrating women, didn't bristle hearing this; they applauded.
What followed was a masterclass on what genuine allyship, entrepreneurial vision, and the quiet revolution of financial independence actually look like on the ground.
The moment that started it all
In conversation with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, at SheSparks 2026, Kumaravel traced the origin of Naturals to a deeply personal moment when his wife Veena refused to remain a housewife.
"She said, “No, I want to be an entrepreneur,’” he recalled.
That decision became the cornerstone of everything Naturals would grow into—a business built not just on haircuts and facials, but on the belief that Indian women deserved a seat at the table.
Today, Naturals operates over 1,000 salons, with more than 600 women-led franchise owners, 99% of whom are first-time entrepreneurs.
The stories Kumaravel recounts are strikingly similar: women who walked in believing their husbands understood business, their fathers knew finance, and their brothers handled numbers. Many women had spent their lives at the periphery of economic decision-making.
Naturals changed this equation.
"I have created house husbands"
"I have created house husbands," Kumaravel said, with characteristic candour. "My women entrepreneurs have started making more money than their husbands."
He paused, and then added with a grin: "The husbands are terrified. But that's their problem."
The room erupted in laughter, but the point ran deeper.
Financial independence doesn't just change a woman's bank balance; it reshapes power dynamics within households and ripples outward into communities.
"Money and power in the hands of women will build a great home and a great country," he said.
He has 600 data points to back this up.
Opportunities hiding in plain sight
For Kumaravel, entrepreneurship is much more than building businesses; it is about unlocking value that has long remained invisible. He illustrated this with a story from a conference in Mumbai years ago.
Sitting beside him was a woman from investment banking who mentioned she was exploring the beauty industry. Kumaravel barely registered it at the time. That woman was Falguni Nayar. Today, her company Nykaa is worth over a lakh crore.
The lesson, he said, is universal: "Values are hidden or trapped—at an individual level, a company level, a community level. Business models that unlock hidden value using technology will be the new winners."
From bridal makeup to saree draping, nail art to tailoring, every unorganised, underserved service is a billion-dollar opportunity waiting for the right combination of problem, idea, technology, and India. The formula repeats. The opportunities, he insists, are everywhere. The only question is who is paying attention.
Thinking beyond regional success
If the first half of the conversation was about changing power dynamics at home, the second was about rethinking India's entrepreneurial ambition.
Naturals, long celebrated as a southern success story, has now crossed 1,000 outlets and is expanding aggressively across the country, with global ambitions not far behind.
"Why should an Indian brand remain in one zone?" Kumaravel asked.
With a population of more than 1.4 billion young, aspirational, digitally connected citizens, he believes India's scale is its greatest competitive advantage—provided entrepreneurs are willing to think big enough.
The 1+1=11 partnership
Then Kumaravel offered his sharpest provocation of the evening—not about business, but about the institution that shapes everything before business even begins.
"The traditional marriage model is: I will take care of you so you will take care of me. That is flawed." The better model is: “I will take care of me for you, so that you can take care of you for me."
Self-sufficiency, in his view, is not the opposite of togetherness; it is the foundation of it. One plus one, he says, should equal eleven. Not two.
The real legacy of naturals
As Naturals sets its sights on a national and then international footprint, and Kumaravel eyes an IPO by 2029, the brand's most enduring product may not be a salon treatment. It may be the slow, compounding confidence of 600 women who discovered, often for the first time, that the business world was never out of their reach. It was just waiting for someone, at home or elsewhere, to stop standing in the way.
Edited by Swetha Kannan