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Tanisha, Founder of Tintessa, on Skin-First Makeup, Lip Butter and Formulating for Indian Skin
When Tanisha returned to Delhi after completing her master’s in biotechnology at the University of Warwick in the UK, she brought back more than a degree. Having spent time in London using makeup products that combined skincare and color, she began looking more closely at what was available in India. The difference she noticed was less about one particular product and more about formulation standards, ingredient transparency and the possibility of creating makeup that was more ingredient-conscious without compromising on pigment, performance or price.
That thinking became part of the foundation for Tintessa, a young beauty brand built around skin-first makeup. The current range is deliberately small, comprising Lip Butter, Mousse Tint and Reset Lip Glass, with the brand taking a more considered approach to product development rather than expanding simply to fill out a conventional beauty catalogue.
Since launching in October 2025, Tintessa has grown from its first month’s revenue of ₹75,000 to ₹8 lakh by January, while continuing to develop products around the needs of Indian skin. The brand’s approach also places considerable emphasis on formulation, content, customer feedback and knowing when not to launch a product.
Alisha Maindola of Style Essentials spoke to Tanisha about the formulation thinking behind Tintessa, building skin-first makeup, the realities of launching a beauty brand at 24, developing products for Indian skin and knowing when a product is ready to go to market.
You landed back in Delhi from Warwick with a biotech master’s and ran out of the skincare-makeup hybrids you’d been using in London. What was the first Indian product you picked up off a shelf that made you think, this wouldn’t be legal to sell in the UK?
It actually wasn’t one dramatic product where I thought, “This is illegal.” It was the difference in formulation standards and ingredient transparency that caught my attention. I’d become so used to checking ingredient lists in the UK that when I came back, I naturally started doing the same here. That’s when I realized there was room for makeup in India that was more ingredient-conscious without compromising on pigment, performance or price.
You were auditing formulations against UK and EU restricted-ingredient lists before you’d formulated a single product of your own. Walk me through that first audit. What’s one ingredient you found in a mainstream Indian product that genuinely surprised you?
My biotechnology background made me slightly obsessive about ingredient lists. I would literally sit with an INCI list and cross-reference ingredients, their concentrations where available, their function and the restrictions around them.
What surprised me more than any one ingredient was how differently the same category could be formulated across markets. It made me realize I didn’t want Tintessa’s standard to simply be, “Is this allowed?” I wanted it to be, “Do we actually need this ingredient, and is there a better way to formulate the product?”
Squalane, ceramides and peptides are usually barrier-repair language, not lip product language. What did your formulation team in South Korea tell you was the hardest part of getting those actives to behave in a lip format without going tacky or unstable?
The challenge is that you can’t just throw skincare actives into makeup and call it skincare-powered. The entire base has to accommodate them. With Lip Butter, for example, the balance was getting the conditioning ingredients into a formula that still had the payoff of makeup: glide, pigment, shine and comfort, without making the stick too soft, greasy or unstable. That balance between treatment and performance is probably the hardest part of developing skin-first makeup.
Kojic acid and niacinamide are known to be temperamental with taste and shelf stability in lip products. How many failed batches did the Lip Butter go through before you landed on ₹799 and were ready to sell it?
I actually wouldn’t connect the ₹799 price to the number of formulation trials. Pricing came from positioning, formulation, packaging and the overall product experience.
And I’m quite careful with the word "failed". Product development is iterative, and every sample tells you something. We kept adjusting texture, pigment, payoff, stability and the overall sensorial experience until I felt the product was genuinely ready. I’d rather delay a launch than put my name behind a formula I’m only 80% happy with.
You launched on 7 October 2025 with ₹80 lakh of family savings behind you. What’s the one line item in that budget you now think you got wrong, in hindsight, whether you overspent or underspent on it?
The biggest thing I underestimated was content and distribution. You can spend months making an incredible product, but if people don’t see it being used, understand why it’s different or see it repeatedly enough to remember it, none of that development matters. If I were starting again, I’d allocate more from day one to consistently getting the product into the hands of the right creators and producing a much larger volume of strong, usable content.
Tintessa did ₹75,000 in its first month and ₹8 lakh by January, a roughly tenfold jump in under four months. Was there a single post, review or moment you can point to where you watched the graph actually bend?
There wasn’t one magical viral post. The graph moved when Lip Butter, our hero product, started becoming a product people were discovering through other people rather than just through us. Once customers began posting it organically, coming back for another shade and recommending it, we knew we had something. For me, repeat purchase was actually more exciting than a viral reel because it proved that the product itself was driving the growth.
Your full range is three products: Lip Butter, Mousse Tint and Reset Lip Glass. At what point did you decide to hold the line at three rather than launch wider, and what’s the actual internal rule that decides what earns a fourth spot?
Very early. I never wanted Tintessa to become a catalogue brand where we launch something just because every beauty brand is expected to have it. Our internal rule is simple: if we can’t explain in one sentence why our version deserves to exist, we don’t launch it. A new product has to either replace multiple steps, improve the ingredient story of an existing category or solve something our customer is repeatedly asking us for. Otherwise, we wait.
You’re 24 and running a brand that prices itself against far more established players. What’s a decision you made early on that an experienced beauty executive would have told you not to make?
Probably being willing to kill something after we’d already spent money on it. We’ve developed shades, produced stock and then realized they weren’t good enough or weren’t translating properly across Indian skin tones. The financially sensible answer would have been to sell through the inventory. My answer was 'no'.
When you’re young, you don’t have decades of brand equity protecting you. Every product someone receives is building their entire opinion of your brand.
Every product in your range is built around lips and cheeks. When does a base or skincare product actually enter the Tintessa catalog, and what’s stopping you from launching one tomorrow?
When we can genuinely add something to the category. I could launch a foundation tomorrow, put skincare ingredients into it and call it skin-first. But that isn’t enough. Base products are incredibly dependent on undertone, oxidation, texture, climate and skin type, especially in India.
So when Tintessa enters complexion, I want the shade development and formulation to be the reason the product exists, not just because foundation was the next obvious SKU on a product roadmap.
If you had to describe the one non-comedogenic, skin-tone-specific gap in Indian makeup that’s still wide open after Tintessa, what would you tell the next 24-year-old founder to go build?
I think the opportunity is still in complexion, but not another 30-shade foundation range for the sake of saying you have 30 shades. Build complexion products around how Indian skin actually behaves: our undertones, pigmentation, heat, humidity, acne-prone skin and the way shades oxidize on us. Make something that understands Indian skin scientifically rather than simply expanding a Western shade chart. That’s the gap I still think is enormous.
