Sephora has revealed the 10 newest BIPOC beauty brand founders to join its 2022 Accelerate brand incubator program, an annual initiative now in its seventh year that looks to provide mentorship, support, and funding to up and coming brands. Earlier in 2021 Sephora announced its intent to increase focus on supporting founders of color.

“We are committed to ensuring that the brands and products found at Sephora represent all the colors, races, and ethnicities that make up America, effectively building a beauty community to which everyone feels they belong,” said Priya Venkatesh, SVP Merchandising, Skin Care and Hair, Sephora. “To do so, it’s important that brand founders of all backgrounds have the opportunity and resources they need to grow their businesses and thrive. Through the Accelerate program, Sephora is committed to giving founders the long-term mentorship, access to market and scale they need to truly accelerate growth, with the program serving as a springboard for nascent brands to become visible, viable, stable, and financially solvent.”

This year’s program includes mentorship, merchandising support, potential funding, and investor connections to all participants, who will have the opportunity to launch at Sephora upon completion of the program.

Below, the 2022 Sephora Accelerate Cohort, demonstrating leadership in beauty representing makeup, skin care, hair care, and for the first time – fragrance.

BASMA is one of 10 BIPOC brands named to Sephora’s 2022 Accelerate program. The above creative is featured on its website, basmabeauty.com
  • Basma Hameed and Parisa Durrani, Founders, BASMA Beauty
    BASMA Beauty believes that makeup should fit into your lifestyle – and not the other way around. BASMA Beauty develops easy-to-use, versatile, and buildable formulas that give you the ultimate control of your beauty routine, via makeup made for real life and real skin.
  • Fara Homidi, Founder, FARA HOMIDI
    A champion of “high performance slow beauty,” this clean luxury beauty line is professionally formulated for effortless application, featuring sustainably-minded packaging and products – including a refill system – and an inclusive color range.
  • Selah Lemon, Founder, House of Foster
    A modern fragrance house rooted in intention, House of Foster doesn’t make you choose between wellness and aesthetic. The brand rejects the mundane and believes in the promotion of intentional formulation that positively provokes the senses.
  • Nisha Phatak and Madhu Punjabi, Co-Founders, Lion Pose
    Lion Pose is the first clean+clinical brand for brown skin—raising research standards and fighting hyperpigmentation with powerful actives. Developed with Harvard-educated dermatologists and clinically tested on skin of color, Lion Pose products are intended to be the first line of defense for brown skin issues, whether melasma, hyperpigmentation, ingrown hairs, or acne.
  • Rimah Husain, Founder, Kempt
    Kempt is elevating the facial hair removal experience with a skin-first approach. The brand offers effective but gentle hair removal products with clean formulations that feature skincare ingredients.
  • Sravya Adusumilli, Founder, Mango People
    Mango People is a line of multi-functional beauty essentials formulated with organic botanical oils, Adaptogenic herbs from Ayurveda, and infused with plant pigments that look and feel incredible on the skin. The brand’s mission is to provide high-performing products that are inclusive of all skin tones, without compromising on ingredients or our planet.
  • Carolina Contreras, Founder, Miss Rizos
    Born in the Dominican Republic over ten years ago first as an online platform that educates, celebrates, and advocates for curly women and girls, Miss Rizos has cultivated and grown a following of curly hair enthusiasts from all over the world. For the past seven years, Miss Rizos also operates two curly salons in New York City and the Dominican Republic. Its curly hair products embody all the experience, love and commitment they have for their community as they try to change the world one curl at a time.
  • Kiku Chaudhuri, Co-Founder, SHAZ & KIKS
    SHAZ & KIKS harnesses the healing powers of Earth’s natural ingredients to build your healthiest hair. Founded by two sisters, the brand’s mission is to create innovative products that are inspired by ancient Indian rituals, using ethically sourced Ayurvedic raw ingredients that are proven natural alternative solutions, to holistically nourish the entire hair ecosystem. Co-founder Shaz Rajashekar will not be participating in the program.
  • Krys Lunardo, Founder, Sistine
    Sistine is an inclusive cabinet of clean skincare formulas for the ecocentric eccentric, curated to match the protective and nourishing properties of earth’s four spheres, with clean ingredients extracted from nutrient-rich terrestrial and aquatic plant-life. The brand believes that beauty is our orbit, where the co-existential harmony of human and eco-care is balanced.
  • Scarlett Rocourt, Founder, Wonder Curl
    Wonder Curl is a Black-owned, vegan hair care line that improves the texture of natural hair by keeping hair nourished and hydrated for days without rewetting or restyling. The brand aims to provide its customers with the best products that will improve the texture of their hair, as well as allow them to enhance their natural curl pattern while achieving any hairstyle they want.