The Story
ISLAND Beauty has raised ₹2.58 crore in a pre-seed round backed by ajvc, the fund run by Aviral Bhatnagar, and Bala Sarda, founder of the tea brand Vahdam. Co-founder Shirley Setia also thanked friends and family who invested.
Setia, the singer and actor, co-founded the skincare brand with Jinsoon Lee, Mayank Jain and Sakshi Beniwal, and is its chief marketing officer. Lee, who is Korean, has worked in trade between Korea and India. The company was founded in 2023, is based in Delhi and launched its products in 2025.
ISLAND Beauty makes skincare designed to support the skin barrier, the outer layer that keeps moisture in and irritants out, and to fit into everyday routines. It sources ingredients from South Korea and develops its formulations in India for local weather and Indian skin, and says its products went through more than 52 iterations before launch. Setia has described the idea as bringing the best of Korean skincare rituals to Indian buyers while making them the brand's own, rather than simply endorsing someone else's product. In September she said more than 650 customers had received their orders.
The money goes into product development, brand awareness and customer acquisition. Over the next three years the company plans to broaden its range and build awareness of barrier-focused skincare.
"In 2018, I manifested that one day I'd co-found a beauty brand," Setia wrote, announcing the round.
Why It Matters
Korean skincare has become one of the most influential forces in Indian beauty over the past few years. Routines built around gentle products, hydration and barrier repair, rather than harsh actives, have found a large audience among young urban buyers through marketplaces, quick-commerce apps and social media. Much of that demand has been met by imported Korean brands, which bring the formulations but also import costs, along with products designed for Korean climates rather than India's heat, humidity and pollution.
ISLAND Beauty sits in the gap between the two: Korean ingredients and approach, formulated in India for Indian conditions. The founding team maps onto that idea. Lee provides the Korean side, with experience of trade between the two countries. Mayank Jain and Sakshi Beniwal run the operating business. And Setia supplies something most new beauty brands spend heavily to buy, which is attention.
That attention is real. Setia built her following through music on YouTube before moving into films, and a beauty brand fronted by a familiar face starts with an audience that would otherwise cost a lot in advertising to reach. It is the same advantage Zomint drew on earlier this month in wealth management, where every client came through its co-founder's content: distribution that arrives with the founder rather than being bought.
The Strategic Read
Celebrity-founded beauty brands have a mixed record, for a simple reason: attention wins the first purchase, and the product has to win the second. A fan who buys a moisturiser because Shirley Setia made it will buy again only if it works better than the alternatives, and in skincare those alternatives are numerous, well funded and often discounted. The barrier-first positioning helps, because it is specific and because barrier care delivers results customers can see for themselves, calmer and less irritated skin. More than 52 iterations suggest the team has taken formulation seriously. The number to watch is how many of those first 650-plus customers come back.
The money is modest for the category. Beauty brands usually spend heavily to acquire customers, and ₹2.58 crore will not buy much paid reach on its own. That makes Setia's own audience more than a marketing bonus. It is the core of the plan, and it puts a premium on turning fans into repeat buyers before spending to reach strangers.
Making the products in India while sourcing ingredients from Korea is a sensible middle path. Imported Korean brands carry duties and shipping costs, which leaves room for a local brand to price below them, and local formulation lets the company adjust textures and ingredients for Indian weather. The difficulty is that the category is crowded at every level, from Korean brands on Indian marketplaces to Indian direct-to-consumer labels and other celebrity names.
For ajvc, ISLAND Beauty is the ninth company to appear on these pages, and the third this month in which the round went beyond the fund's usual ₹1.5 crore cheque, here alongside Bala Sarda, who built Vahdam into a tea brand sold around the world. With the Moroccan-inspired beauty brand MoroMaa already in its portfolio, beauty brands built around a distinct cultural angle are becoming a recognisable thread in what ajvc backs.
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