Personalised skincare startup Yours raises US$3.5m in seed funding

YOURS, a Singapore-based startup focusing on personalised skincare, closed a US$3.5 million seed round in August this year. Investors include Sequoia India's accelerator programme Surge, Global Founders Capital, Uber-backer Kindred Ventures, and an undisclosed celebrity fund.

Yours will be investing heavily in computer vision and machine learning for personalisation of skincare. Users complete an online skin assessment by uploading a photograph of themselves and answering questions about their skin, lifestyle, and environment.

Data from the photograph is extracted through computer vision algorithms and combined with inputs from the questionnaire. The data is then fed into a proprietary personalisation model that decodes skin needs, and a personalised skincare regimen is created.

The startup was founded by former Uber employees Navneet Kaur and Shivam Sharma. Ms Kaur, who is chief executive, started her career in the beauty industry as a skincare brand manager at Indian multinational conglomerate ITC Limited, then spent half a decade in big tech and mobility, heading operations and strategy at Uber and ofo.

Mr Sharma, the chief marketing officer, spent his early years as a digital marketer before joining Uber, where he led business development in South-east Asia. He later headed strategic partnerships for GrabFood.

Ms Kaur said: "New consumers demand new models, and the imminent transformation of this industry will set aside the dated one-size-fits-all business model that produces en-masse; opting for clean and environmentally-friendly options that are, at once, data-driven and catered to individual needs."