Samntha Ruth Prabhu reflects on the success of her Rs 120 crore perfume brand: ‘Success hasn’t taught me much…’

Samnatha Ruth Prabhu is on cloud nine now. Aside from expecting her first child, her film Maa Inti Bangaaram has also been a blockbuster, and her other baby – the perfume startup Secret Alchemist – crossed the Rs 120 crore revenue mark too. In a chat with Masoom Minawala, the actress, who suffers from an immune condition known as myositis, said how illness helped her become more aware of the lifestyle choices she had been making. Her doctor had advised her to lead a cleaner lifestyle, reduce usage of harsh chemicals and

“The doctor advised me to read the ingredients, read labels better and reduce the use of harsh chemicals. I didn’t know that the traditional perfumes that I was using had so many different chemicals,” she said.

She said she gave up using perfumes for nearly two years. At some point she returned to using them, but it didn’t feel the same. That time she was using Secret Alchemist aromatherapy blends. Her search for cleaner and more organic alternatives made her approach her business partner Ankita Thadani, and the rest was history.


While her perfume business is a roaring success, this was not her first business venture, and her first initiative also failed. “My first partnership didn’t work. It failed. And sometimes, the first project that you invest in failing can actually be a good thing. It can actually teach you more than success,” she said.

She explained that she had learned more from her failures than success. “I think my life has been about learning from my failures. Not learning from my success. Success hasn’t really taught me much,” she reminisced.

She also had advice for entrepreneurs; she said all businesses involve setbacks and big risks and they should not be scared of failing or their plans getting delayed or bottlenecks they could not have thought of, come up.

“For anyone who is looking at this successful brand, it took us a long time to get here and a series of mistakes. Everything was built step by step. Along with success came a long list of failures. There have been many projects that have been absolute failures, left us disappointed, almost giving up. It applies to every entrepreneur. It is very important that when you see success, you see everything that led them to this moment,” she explained.

On the work front, Samantha was most recently seen in the action drama Maa Inti Bangaaram, which emerged as her highest solo-grossing movie, earning over Rs 100 crore globally.