Mrunal Panchal, a 26-year-old content creator turned entrepreneur, has topped the 2025 Candere Hurun India Women Leaders List in the category of most-followed influencer-founders. With 5.5 million Instagram followers and a growing consumer brand, Mrucha Beauty, Panchal represents a new breed of digital-first entrepreneurs increasingly shaping India’s consumer economy.
Who is Mrunal Panchal?
Panchal is the youngest among the 97 women profiled across categories like wealth creation, professional leadership, philanthropy and culture. Her inclusion signals the growing formalisation and commercial relevance of influencer-led businesses, particularly in sectors like beauty and personal care.
Mrucha Beauty, incorporated in January 2024 as a private limited entity headquartered in Mohali, operates in the mid-premium cosmetics space. With an authorised capital of Rs 1 lakh, the company is led by directors Panchal and Anirudh Sharma and follows a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model, selling primarily through its own platform.
Unlike many celebrity-backed or influencer-led cosmetic ventures that rely on name recall, Mrucha’s product strategy focuses on shade diversity, user experience, and price accessibility. The brand launched with the “Glow Up” lip collection and later expanded into lip markers and blush products. Pricing ranges from Rs 389 to Rs 1,649, targeting aspirational but price-sensitive consumers.
A key differentiator has been the company’s attention to digital infrastructure, partnering with fintech platform Razorpay to enable one-click checkouts and reduce payment failures during high-traffic launches. This indicates a level of operational preparedness often missing in creator-led launches.
While Mrucha does not position itself aggressively around sustainability or skincare science, it does promote cruelty-free and “clean beauty” credentials, terms that resonate with younger consumers. However, the brand has not yet disclosed sourcing details, environmental practices, or third-party certifications.
Apart from her brand, Panchal has collaborated with a wide range of beauty, fashion, and lifestyle brands. In the beauty space, she has worked with both mass and premium labels, including Maybelline, L’Oréal Paris, Nivea, Ponds, M.A.C Cosmetics, NYX, Smashbox, Charlotte Tilbury, Dior, Rare Beauty, Kylie Cosmetics, Too Faced, Lancome, TIRTIR, Nature Spell, and MARS Cosmetics. In fashion and accessories, her partnerships have included Ceriz Fashion, Joker & Witch, and Burger Bae. She has also appeared in campaigns for media platforms such as SonyLIV. Notably, in 2023, she was invited to Rare Beauty’s global event in New York, representing India as one of the few international creators selected for the launch.
Its packaging and branding lean heavily on Gen Z visual codes, and Panchal remains the brand’s main promotional asset. The founder’s social media content often doubles as product marketing, creating a feedback loop between product development and user response. Reddit discussions, for instance, have influenced shade expansions. India’s beauty market is expected to touch $20 billion by 2025.
Mrucha’s current scale is unclear, financials are not publicly available, but the company appears to be in its early growth phase. Industry watchers note that the brand’s long-term success will depend on its ability to build independent brand equity beyond Panchal’s persona, expand offline and omnichannel reach, and maintain product quality during scale-up.