I’m a South Asian Beauty Founder—The Dopamine-Boosting Makeup Tip I Swear By

The Lineup is a monthly series where we’re giving you an inside peek at the beauty lineups of the most sought-after experts and tastemakers in the industry. Get ready for a behind-the-scenes look at all the can’t-live-without products that make their worlds go ’round.

You probably know this by now, but makeup is not just for camouflaging a blemish or filling in sparse brows. It serves a much greater purpose: self-expression. My best friend even exalts makeup to art—richly pigmented blush and a multicolored eye shadow palette are the paint, and her face is the canvas.

While the beauty industry has recently made strides toward inclusivity with expanded shade ranges, marginalized communities have often felt that this integral form of self-expression isn’t available to them. Kulfi Beauty founder Priyanka Ganjoo knows this feeling deeply. “As a teenager growing up in India in the early 2000s, I never saw anyone who looked like me in beauty campaigns, which made me feel like it wasn’t for me,” she explains. “In my late 20s, I started working in the beauty industry in New York at Estée Lauder and then at Ipsy. I started playing around with makeup and discovered how fun and expressive it is.”

Throughout Ganjoo’s career in the beauty industry, she struggled to find products that complemented her skin tone. So in 2020, she founded Kulfi Beauty to encourage people to create a joyful relationship with beauty and celebrate their unique identity without pressure to conform to beauty standards. This mission echoes through the brand, from its name to its product formulations to its shades. “The name Kulfi comes from this South Asian ice cream that’s full of fun colors and flavors—the exact playful vibe we aim for when we create each product,” Ganjoo says. “Kufli stands for self-expression, joy, and embracing yourself.”