Estée Lauder is offering $250k grant to a TikToker "reshaping the future of beauty"
The Estée Lauder Companies’s investment and incubation arm, New Incubation Ventures, has today launched The Catalysts programme. This venture is designed to empower emerging storytellers from TikTok’s beauty community.
A panel of industry luminaries and TikTok creators will select two winners who are "reshaping the future of beauty", whether that be through innovative branding, product development or storytelling. Applicants will have the chance to win up to £197k ($250k) in financial backing as well as mentorship and project assistance.
New Incubation Ventures (NIV) is the strategic early-stage investment and incubation arm for The Estée Lauder Companies. It partners with forward-thinking founders and entrepreneurs to create, fund, and support the best-emerging beauty brands.
With this new programme, NIV is championing trailblazers in the beauty space, accentuating the influence and impact the beauty industry has.
In recent years, TikTok's beauty community has revolutionised the beauty industry, creating an inclusive space that has the ability to boost a product's vitality overnight. With #Beauty amassing over 45 million posts, TikTok is a incubator for new and emerging trends, whether it be latte makeup or the strawberry girl aesthetic.
Shana Randhava, Senior Vice President of New Incubation Ventures, said: "Today, founding a beauty brand takes more than traditional business acumen; it's about crafting narratives, building communities, and shaping not just trends but also broader conversations and movements. Founders are storytellers, cultural ambassadors, filmmakers, designers, gamers, and artists.
"Their visions of beauty — expressed via product, retail experiences, films, content — continue to fuel growth in the beauty sector. We set out to create a program to identify and elevate these visionaries as they continue to drive innovation and push the conversation forward."
Vanessa Craft, Global Head of Partnerships at TikTok, added: "We've witnessed the evolution of beauty firsthand on TikTok, not just through how products are shared and discovered, but how they are experienced.
We're proud to have created a space where everyone is able to explore the diversity and inclusivity of beauty - driven by our incredible community of creators and brands who enable enthusiasts to be a part of something and see how beauty products perform on people that look like them. We are delighted to be joining The Estée Lauder Companies in finding and nurturing future pioneers of the beauty industry."
Applicants will be judged by an esteemed jury including Shana Randhava, Vanessa Craft, Michèle Lamy, Fabien Baron, Craig McDean, Carlos Nazario, Eugene Souleiman, Hung Vanngo, Ruba Abu-Nimah, Julia Sarr-Jamois, Thomas Roussel, Violet Chachki, Drew Elliott, Courtney McHugh, Andreas Neophytou, Francisco Costa, Celia Ellenberg, Hanna Hanra, Sallyann Houghton, Mitchell Halliday, and Grace Choi.
