We recently connected with Anisha Vinjamuri and have shared our conversation below.
Anisha, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Know the Founder:
I am Anisha Vinjamuri, the founder and CEO of UMMSKINCARE. The inspiration to build a body care and wellness brand that bridges the gap between internal wellness and external skin health stemmed from my journey of experiencing burnout while living life at a fast pace in the technology world.
I was born and raised in India, Hyderabad in a traditional South Indian household where I finished a double Masters’s in Commerce & Foreign Trade. I had an arranged marriage right out of college and moved to Seattle, WA, in 2003. Since then, I’ve worked in the technology industry (Microsoft) and subsequently founded a technology management firm InnovationsIQ, taking it through a successful exit in 2017. UMM is my 3rd career shift and entirely out of my comfort zone, and I enjoy a good challenge :).
I’m a mom to a wonderful 19-year-old Nirekh and two gorgeous K9 German Shepherds, Axie & Neo. We live in the beautiful PNW and take advantage of time in the healing nature, mountains & lakes around us.
Apart from running my business, I enjoy exploring local wineries and learning about Red wines specifically. Some of my hobbies are Olympic weight lifting, training my K9s, cooking & growing my indoor garden. (Not necessarily in that order).
Thank you for making it this far to learn about me. I hope your journey to healthier skin, a better body, and mindful moments begin with our thoughtfully developed product portfolio. We look forward to being a part of your everyday elevated self-care moments.
Founder Story:
What started as a personal project to find a sustainable solution for my skin health and overall well-being has evolved into a vision bigger than mine: bridging the gap between internal wellness and external skin health.
I relied on prescription medication for almost 7 years in my 30s to combat my acne & eczema conditions and heavy doses of anti-depressants to negate the side effects of all the medication I was taking. My life was consumed with high-functioning anxiety and insomnia due to my band-aid approach to lifestyle choices. In 2016 I consciously decided to address the root cause of my skin health and well-being issues instead of relying on a band-aid approach to life which was not working for me.
This journey of self-discovery reconnected me back to my roots in Ayurveda and was the foundation that later inspired me to start UMMSKINCARE in 2019.
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About UMM
At UMM SKINCARE, we believe that skin health is a synchrony of mind, body, and the natural world. Hence we embarked on a mission to revive the timeless Ayurvedic body care experiences & well-being rituals for modern luxury lifestyles.
When we founded our company, we wanted to bridge the gap between internal wellness & external body care for transformative skin health. We took inspiration from the Vedic texts of Charaka Samhita and leaned into the whole body holistic skincare approach to heal, repair, and nourish the skin & scalp barrier.
Our product experiences are thoughtfully developed under the guidance of a renowned Ayurvedic practitioner, dermatologist & medicinal plant taxonomist to deliver preventative, curative, and therapeutic benefits to your skin & scalp.
We believe in bringing back ancient traditions with modern innovation while embracing conscious luxury. At UMM SKINCARE, we’re committed to providing you with what you need to take care of yourself inside & out!
Welcome to the journey of honoring your body
www.ummskincare.com
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
The inspiration to build a brand that blends body care and wellness stemmed from my journey of experiencing burnout while living life at a fast pace in the technology world. A path of healing, revival, and self-reconnection through a personalized approach in 2017 grew into a vision bigger than mine. Ayurvedic practices transformed my life from chronic anxiety, depression, insomnia, acne, eczema, and hair loss to having positive mindset shifts and achieving the healthiest skin I have ever had and mindful tools to manage anxious times.
I know that there are many people out there just like me who love being on the GO! Unfortunately, the downside of the high drive is burnout, and your skin is the external mirror showcasing internal imbalance through skin and scalp issues. But, I can assure you that there is a way to protect yourself from the negative impacts of it while you still live in the fast lane so that you can be the best version of yourself.
It took a hard stop, reset, time, and expert guidance for me to find a solution. Knowing how it feels and what it takes, I am driven by the desire to help those with packed lifestyles look and feel great through Ayurvedic-inspired body care and well-being approach that can be easily integrated into your daily lifestyle. My healthiest skin came from blending body care with wellness. It was a transformative experience for me, and I promise it will be for you too!
After all, We all deserve to look and feel good – it doesn’t have to be one or the other!
Personal Bio
I am Anisha Vinjamuri, the founder and CEO of UMMSKINCARE. I was born and raised in India, Hyderabad in a traditional South Indian household, and completed my education there. By 22, I had completed a double master’s, Master’s in Commerce & a Master’s in Foreign Trade, had an arranged married right out of college, and moved to Seattle, WA, in 2003 right after. Since then, I’ve worked in the technology industry (Microsoft) and subsequently founded a technology management firm InnovationsIQ, taking it through a successful exit in 2017. UMM is my 3rd career shift and entirely out of my comfort zone, and I enjoy a good challenge :).
Have you ever had to pivot?
I’ve had to pivot and adapt to several situations in the sea of constant changes the life of Entrepreneurship brings.
My career itself spanned across three completely different areas. I did my Masters in Commerce and Accounting as well as a Masters in Foreign trade in India, but when I moved to the US in 2003, it was a time when the .com industry was rapidly growing, which also meant that learning/understanding computer technologies made it easier to find a job in the tech industry versus a career in accounting.
So, I self-taught myself test engineering when my newborn napped during the day and at night. This helped me land a job at Microsoft as a test engineering consultant. During my time at Microsoft, as my responsibilities expanded, I had an opportunity to collaborate with several external agencies to execute projects, which sparked my interest in the world of change management and agile transformation. No company that worked on this expertise also catered to employee/employer company culture fit mapping in 2009. So, I founded InnovationsIQ with a value-driven approach. In 2017 after taking it through a successful exit, I embarked on a personal journey to heal, reset and realign my life goals the same year to address my crippling burnout and overall gaps in well-being, which reconnected me to a more meaningful and mindful way of life.
Today I am 43 years old, have the best skin I’ve ever had, the most restful sleep & a balanced intentional lifestyle. Reconnecting with my roots in Ayurveda and integrating several elements of this ancient wisdom in ways that work for me in this contemporary world has helped me. This inspired me to share goodness with the world, so I started UMM in 2019.
That is four major pivots in themselves, and I’ve had countless more minor pivots in execution within each career phase. My goal had always stayed the same, but many factors in each stage made us change the path to reach our goals. After all, change is the only permanent thing in life, and we must be open to adapting it gracefully with a growth mindset if we want to achieve great things.
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
The most recent near-death moment in the journey of UMMSKINCARE, still so fresh in my mind, was in 2020.
We launched our beta version in 2019 after two years of intense work, concept and product development, design, brand work, and manufacturing. Our market entry was planned as an experiential luxury pop-up approach. Entry into Ayurvedic skin and body care was a very educational and experience-driven concept in 2019 because it was not popular or well-known in the western world.
We had everything in place to kick off with a series of events planned for the year and a relatively huge amount of inventory (for a startup) stocked. And then COVID- 19 took over the world in Jan 2020, just when we were set to launch on Jan 19. Nothing could have helped us plan for what was to come that year, and that was a devasting time for us as a business.
As a business, we could not recover any of the losses, nor did we have the funds to compete with online traffic that exponentially increased. It was a nightmare of a time for us, and we had to pivot our strategy without any capital reserves. A lot of out of box thinking and approaches were involved. It was an insane journey, but we are here today and progressing in the direction we have always envisioned, despite not having any connections in the beauty industry or external capital funding.
Hope, patience, hard work, belief in yourself, and resilience are crucial in near-death situations like this. I’m glad we are over this; it has undoubtedly built a new muscle in me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ummskincare.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ummskincare/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ummskincare/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/umm-skincare/