Meet the owner of BBlunt, who made curls cool in Bollywood: Adhuna Bhabani
Adhuna Bhabani arrived in Mumbai with her own avant-garde fashion, and she knew that if she had things her way, Indian hairdressing would never be the same. She made her mark as a stylist – when she boldly became the first ever hairdresser who didn’t flatten Preity Zinta’s unruly curls for the big screen, and that do became legendary. And as an entrepreneur, teaming up with her equally resourceful brother Osh, she started one of India’s most chic and most beloved chain of salons, BBlunt, now expanding at the speed of light. In this video, Bhabani travels time to tell us how she built a brand when the market was at its most disorganised.
#Curls #BBlunt #Bollywood #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
#Curls #BBlunt #Bollywood #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:10 The wonderful world of appetizing,
00:12 and we got to know a lot about the lies.
00:15 [LAUGHS]
00:19 I still do not speak Hindi very well.
00:21 I was not born here.
00:26 I was born in the UK.
00:27 So when I was growing up as a child,
00:30 I always actually wanted to be a hairdresser.
00:33 I mean, the aha moment for me was when I was 14 years old.
00:37 I started going to the salon with my mom
00:40 when she would get her hair done.
00:42 And my mom's someone who's really kind of particular
00:45 about her hair.
00:46 I started working during my school holidays
00:50 and on weekends.
00:53 And I just loved salon life.
00:55 I loved the fact that people were very individualistic.
00:59 I had a very unusual name in the UK.
01:02 I had a very unusual look.
01:04 So it was for the first time for me
01:06 that I had been accepted for being a little bit unique
01:10 or a little bit different.
01:11 I actually did my training in the Northwest of England.
01:18 I started-- that's kind of where I'm from in the UK.
01:21 And fashion was really out there in the '80s.
01:27 And when I came to India in the beginning,
01:30 hairdressing as a profession had not been fully explored.
01:34 And so it was a great time to be in India
01:37 because people were ready for change.
01:40 I worked freelance for some time.
01:43 Language was a great big barrier for me.
01:46 I still do not speak Hindi very well.
01:48 It's very, very what I call taxi Hindi.
01:52 I can get by in a taxi.
01:53 Working in fashion and film were things that I really
01:59 aspired to be able to do.
02:01 I had been trying to meet photographers, advertising
02:05 agencies, and nobody was really very interested.
02:09 When I met Rafiq, he actually liked the work that I'd done.
02:14 He basically gave me my first break.
02:16 And they had cast a girl with waist-length hair.
02:21 And the reference picture was short hair.
02:25 So that was my first ever foray into the wonderful world
02:29 of advertising.
02:30 And we got to know a lot about the lies.
02:33 So Dil Chahta Hai, for us, I think
02:42 is always going to be one of the most favorite projects we've
02:45 ever worked on.
02:46 So we worked with looks that we were just very, very
02:49 into, working with styles and techniques of cutting hair
02:53 that we were into at the time.
02:55 We never, ever thought really anything more of it than that,
02:59 trying to do looks that we thought were cool.
03:02 And luckily for us, everyone else thought they were cool too.
03:05 I was actually very happy working
03:10 as a freelance hairdresser and makeup artist,
03:13 which I was in those days.
03:15 It was my brother, really, who kind of wanted
03:17 to have a business of his own.
03:20 And this is a very old joke.
03:24 He basically cashed in on my talent.
03:27 And we created a salon that was a little bit different
03:30 for its time, I think.
03:32 It was all about passion in those days.
03:35 I'm the kind of person--
03:36 and I'm from a background of people
03:38 who are very happy to get their sleeves rolled up
03:41 and do anything that is required to make something happen,
03:45 from preparing a salon environment,
03:48 to sweeping the floors, to making the coffee,
03:50 to cleaning the bathrooms, to whatever was needed.
03:54 We had quite a grand space with only four salon chairs.
03:59 We had only one person to cut hair, which was me.
04:01 Suddenly, we realized that the maths of this
04:04 doesn't work out, right?
04:05 So we needed to get a bigger team.
04:07 We needed to add more chairs into that big space.
04:11 And so on were the learnings as we got bigger and as we grew.
04:15 What was on my mind was growth, was products.
04:23 So working with GCPL has given me the opportunity
04:27 to make definitely one of my dreams come true.
04:30 And I think that in collaboration
04:32 with GCPL on the products, that's
04:35 one aspect of our business.
04:37 But we also have many other verticals
04:40 of the business.
04:41 We have our franchise.
04:42 We have our salons.
04:44 We have our academies.
04:46 And we have our shoot crew, which
04:49 is the work that we do outside of our in-film fashion.
04:52 Advice I would like to give to my youngest self
04:58 is go to college, study business,
05:03 and learn to do your accounts.
05:05 The rest of my secrets, I'm not telling you.
05:08 (upbeat music)