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Namrata Nayyar-Kamdar
Founder @Plenaire
Namrata Nayyar-Kamdar is a seasoned Brand Developer with a rich background in managing and growing personal care/beauty brands globally, accumulating over 18 years of experience in the field.
Her career includes pivotal roles at renowned FMCG companies like PEPSI, Coke, and Unilever. At Unilever, she spearheaded the development of Baby Dove and successfully repositioned Lakme Skin Care and Color cosmetics in India around 2005.
Transitioning to Lumene, a boutique Finnish beauty brand, Namrata excelled as the Skincare Innovation and Digital Director, enhancing the brand's skincare products and launching Lumene.com. Additionally, she holds the position of Founder and CEO at Shalohm, focusing on collaborating and investing with early-stage entrepreneurs in digital, wellness, and beauty sectors.
Namrata's diverse expertise encompasses product development, design, digital UX, and multicultural audience understanding, particularly centered on personal care and beauty categories with a strong emphasis on female consumers.
She is actively involved in various boards, including Kamdar Private Limited and Vidya Cathedral Education Trust, showcasing her commitment to both business and philanthropy.
Combining her vast experience and entrepreneurial spirit, Namrata ventured into creating Plenaire, a community-centered beauty brand tailored for Gen Z. Launched in 2019, Plenaire's debut collection has garnered praise and a loyal following for its cleaner ingredients and sustainable packaging, available at select retailers in Europe and cultbeauty.com.
Namrata's educational background further strengthens her professional prowess, holding a Bachelor's degree in Business and Economics from Delhi University and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Global Marketing and Consumer Psychology & Behavior.
Currently based in Fulham, London, Namrata resides with her husband and two children, balancing her successful career with a fulfilling family life.
Highlights
There were over 6,700 business insolvencies in Britain in Q2 2023, more than double what was seen in a typical quarter during the pandemic, even though in that period protection measures were in place. However, even compared with a more normal period these are up by 50% compared with the same quarter in 2019.
2023 has not been an easy year and one where I asked myself the question a few times- when is this going to end? When do things get back to where they used to be? The answer is, they may never go back to that. This may not be a blip. Perhaps instead we are amid a correction, the aftermath of an unrealistic period of growth or extreme innovation that came before. Even so, it’s not all doom and gloom. Despite a continued set of challenges on consumer demand, cost of inputs and raw materials, the need to bootstrap harder than ever, there are always things to be grateful for.
And in honour of that, I am sharing 10 highlights from 2023.
✨April: Presenting Plenaire at the Clean Beauty fair in London, talking about how wellness and beauty are intertwined. ✨✨Launching Plenaire Aesthetique in collaboration with mental health charity Anna Freud, where I am lucky enough to serve as a trustee. ✨May: The pleasure of being able to see products come down a production line, despite the ever-increased cost of inputs and labour. ✨✨Applying and being shortlisted to as a brand in the best Sustainable Beauty category at the CEW UK awards ✨June: Standing on stage at the Barbican to present Plenaire to a roomful of incredible supporters via Unrest thanks to Orr Vinegold ✨July: Meeting incredible role models and business icons like The Business of Fashion's Imran Ahmed and BYREDO founder Ben Gorham IRL at the Business of Beauty in LA. ✨September: Achieving our B Corp certification after 18 months, sharing how we plan to reset beauty. ✨October: Delivering our launch event at prominent retailers like Galeries Lafayette and extensions into Le BHV ✨November: Speaking alongside my long time friend and mental health advocate Aparna Piramal Raje about the evolution of therapy. ✨December: Being honored by King Charles the III at the Claridges in his latest book, the Leadership of A Modern Monarch with a spotlight on philanthropy and sustainability.
I look back at 2023 and appreciate how lucky I am to have a combination of experiences that make working on your own business so unique.
Starting my company was one of the scariest steps I have ever taken. Are there times that I think that it was a crazy decision? Sure. But, as hard as it gets, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If you are an entrepreneur and having a tough time, please know you are not alone. I try to be present rather than looking over my shoulder & comparing with what others are doing. Take time to enjoy the moment, celebrate success no matter how small, and separate the failures (that will happen – of course) from yourself. #Solofounder #Foundermentalhealth #smallbusiness
Very excited to announce that as of October 1st, Plenaire has joined the 1500 businesses in the UK that are certified Benefit Corporations ( B Corps)
What is a B Corp? "Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose."
✅Plenaire is now part of a community of 7,000 businesses globally who have certified as B Corps.
The B Corp community in the UK, representing a broad cross section of industries and sizes, comprises over 1,500 companies and include well-known brands such as The Guardian, Innocent Drinks, The Body Shop and organic food pioneers Abel & Cole ✨✨
✅For Plenaire, this means that we will continue to place social impact at the heart of our business, via the 3 key pillars as stated in our B Corp Impact Business Model:
From connecting everyday beauty rituals to emotional health, serving underserved communities, through to environmental leadership achieved via producing locally, measuring & offsetting carbon, and emphasizing a zero waste approach to consumption and packaging : Plenaire's B Corp goals reflect what we’d like to see from the beauty community at large over time.💚
✅And we don’t intend to stop there!Through the process of certifying we have discovered that there is a lot more we can do across our stated pillars. Whilst achieving this certification is a big win, there is more to come.
✅Over the next 3 years, we intend to continue to emphasise social impact by aiming to continuously improve our B Corp score and we will share these plans with you as our journey continues. Qualifying as a B Corp is a commitment to continuing to strive for excellence, rather than an end goal in itself.
But for now, please join us in celebrating what is a huge milestone for our brand. ✨✨
#bcorp #sustainablebusiness #beauty #sustainability #independentbeauty #madeintheuk #mentalhealth #beautybusiness #bcorpuk #benefitcorporation💚
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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