From Viral Hack to Growth Brand: What Sherry Jhawar’s Appointment Really Means
Live Tinted’s new CEO appointment of Sherry Jhawar, with founder Deepica Mutyala shifting into a visionary brand growth and strategy role, marks the company’s evolution from a founder-led beauty startup into a professionally managed, investor-backed growth brand that aims to build lasting scale and influence in the hybrid make-up and skin care market. This is not a routine executive shuffle—it is a clear statement about what phase Live Tinted believes it has entered. The brand started in 2018 out of Mutyala’s viral 2015 red-lipstick corrective hack and grew from community platform into prestige beauty player. Now that it has sold more than one million products in 2025 and reports its Hueguard Skin Tint SPF 50 selling every two minutes, the company is signaling it needs seasoned beauty brand leadership to match its momentum. In short, story-led is giving way to scale-led—without losing the story.
Why Live Tinted Needs a Professional CEO Now
Jhawar assumes the Live Tinted new CEO role after a period of clear acceleration, and the timing is no coincidence. Earlier this year, the brand secured fresh investment led by Curate Capital, with L’Oréal’s venture arm Bold and existing investor Unilever Ventures joining the round. The company says this raise valued the business at more than double its 2023 Series A valuation, a quotable jump that demands stronger operational discipline and investor-grade reporting. When institutional capital steps in at that scale, it usually expects a leadership structure built for predictable growth rather than pure founder instinct. Jhawar’s appointment signals that Live Tinted accepts it is now playing in the big leagues of beauty brand leadership. With products in major retailers across North America and via online partners in the UK, the distribution footprint is too wide—and the stakes too high—to rely on informal startup processes any longer.
Deepica Mutyala’s Founder Transition Role: Vision Over Operations
The most telling part of this move is not that Live Tinted has a new CEO, but that Deepica Mutyala is deliberately redefining her job. She will continue as founder and visionary, remain on the board, and focus on shaping the company vision, deepening community ties, driving innovation, and keeping the mission sharp. That is a classic founder transition role: stepping back from operational control while protecting the brand’s soul. Mutyala has been clear that her goal is to build Live Tinted into a legacy brand, and legacy brands are rarely run day-to-day by the original storyteller forever. Instead of clinging to the CEO title, she is choosing the function where she has the most impact. In an industry where many founders resist ceding control, this choice is both strategically sound and surprisingly mature—and it raises expectations that the brand will avoid the identity drift that often follows professionalization.
What Sherry Jhawar Brings—and Why Her Background Matters
The Sherry Jhawar appointment is not about finding any seasoned executive; it is about installing someone who already understands the brand’s DNA and the mechanics of scaled beauty. Jhawar has advised Live Tinted for years and served as a board member, calling her elevation to CEO a “full-circle moment.” Her early career at L’Oréal and her role on the founding team of EOS as head of marketing and innovation gave her experience with mainstream consumer products and high-volume distribution. She later invested in emerging brands, co-founded a strategic marketing agency, and held multiple board seats—exactly the kind of portfolio that blends creativity with hard-nosed growth thinking. Coming off the presidency of BeautyBio, she also brings familiarity with beauty-tech and advanced formulations to a brand built around skin-first, inclusive complexion products. In practical terms, Live Tinted now has a leader who can convert its community-led story and flagship hits like Hueguard Skin Tint SPF 50 into a more scalable, repeatable growth engine.
The Bigger Signal: Hybrid Beauty Expansion With Institutional Backing
Zooming out, this leadership change says as much about the state of hybrid beauty expansion as it does about Live Tinted itself. Jhawar joins a brand backed by L’Oréal BOLD and Unilever Ventures, in what was the first joint investment these two venture arms have made in a US-based beauty company. That level of institutional endorsement effectively crowns Live Tinted as one of the category’s most promising players. It also raises the bar: investors do not back hybrid make-up and skin care brands just to incrementally grow Hueguard and Huestick; they are betting on platforms that can redefine shade inclusivity and complexion care at scale. Jhawar has said she is honored to help “scale the impact of a brand and mission” she believes in, emphasizing that Live Tinted “has proven there is enormous demand for products created with all skin tones in mind.” The conclusion is clear: Live Tinted is no longer a niche community darling, but a contender shaping the next chapter of inclusive beauty—and it is restructuring itself accordingly.
