Glam Studios: Spreading affordable salons across India, one city at a time

According to TechNavio, the Professional Salon Care market in India is poised to grow at a CAGR of 27.07 per cent between 2014 and 2019. However, when it comes to budget hair and beauty services, there are mostly stand alone shops and no brands in India. Glam Studios, launched in 2015, is breaking the barriers, emerging as an affordable salon brand.

Marketed as India’s first brand of affordable salons, Glam Studios has 40 operational salons in Delhi-NCR. Having recently received another round of angel funding, the brand aims at taking that number to 100 salons by the end of this year.

Glam Studios was started by Sadiya Naseem, Darakhshan Husain, Feeroz Akhter and Ajay Bansal, a team that brings 40 years of experience, with the vision of making high quality and standardised beauty services affordable and available to the customers next door. In an interview with Wellness India, Sadiya Naseem, Founder & CEO, Glam Studios, tells us about the USP of the brand, expansion plans and more.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

In which year did you conceptualise Glam Studios and how much did you invest in it?

We started working on the concept in October 2015 with bootstrapping. On December 25, 2015, we launched three studios and in January 2016, we raised a seed capital of Rs 30 lakhs from Aqeel Ahmed, COO, Rategain Technologies, with which we scaled to 30 salons.

How are you going about scaling up?

We’ve recently raised another round of funding from angel investors in July of around Rs 2 crores. We are aiming to activate 100 salons. We are upgrading the existing salons by introducing technology, standardization of rates and processes by training and then by bringing them on a platform which is a mobile based platform to connect with the customers and book them online.

Elaborate the business DNA and USP of your brand.

If you look at the budget salons, from the supplier’s point of view, you cannot become a brand because there are huge barriers for entry for them. We’ve completely omitted the money involved in being associated with a brand. If you look at the customer, they do not have choices in the affordable segment. We are solving the problem by salon owner also by giving them a brand and he customer also by offering a credible experience.

Tell us about the geographical presence of the brand in India.

Currently, we are focused on Delhi-NCR. However, we have studios in Hyderabad also. But the focus will remain on Delhi-NCR for some more time.

No plans to expand in other regions of the country?

We have plans but not at this point of time.

Why Delhi-NCR only?

Because we first want to go deep into one geography to understand it better. And once you start in different cities, according to me, it’s a different startup altogether. Every geography comes with its variations, its culture, its own problems. So we first want to master one geography and then see how to replicate the model in other regions of the country.

Tell us about the promotional strategy of your brand.

We are tapping costumers from every angle. We are doing ATL and BTL activities. Web are there on digital media. We’ve got followers on Facebook etc. We are also doing some B2B tie-ups, strategic alliances in terms of penetrating the brand in the market.

Do you retail also?

We are not retailing any products as of now. We have recently tied up with Wella Professionals and Lotus for skin and hair and we are in the process of getting similar deals in the future.

What is the pricing strategy of Glam Studios?

If you look at the prices, you’ll find our prices to be at least 40 per cent lower than brands like Jawed Habib etc.

Any plans to get into franchising?

Not at this point of time. In future, we might go for it, but not in a year or two. Our focus right now is only expansion in Delhi-NCR. We’ve already introduce our CRM, we want to strengthen that and we want to focus on mobile application and other web technologies wherein we can engage with the customers apart from giving them a booking platform.

Where are you seeing Glam Studios by 2020?

By 2020, we plan to have 2,000 salons on our platform. By the end of 2016, we are aiming to have 100 activated salons and if you look at the financial year, we plan to acquire 500 salons. We’ll be replicating our strategies in different cities once we are done with 100 salons in Delhi-NCR.