30-Year-Old Influencer Made $4 Million In Sales By Creating Luxury Hair Oil Brand

Erim Kaur, entrepreneur and influencer, made $4 million in sales after founding a hair-oil brand rooted in ancient Indian traditions. London-based Kaur has over 700,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok combined, and founded ByErim in 2019 — a luxury haircare brand known for its flagship hair growth oil containing eight pure oils, including Amla, Argan, Coconut, and Castor oil. It has raked in £3.3 million ($4.2 million) since its launch.

The 30-year-old pinned the popularity of her hair growth oil on having social media savvy and building a core audience of young Indian women and men turning to her for beauty and life advice. “I think one of the strongest messages I’ve always had has been that I want to do it for girls or boys that have grown up without a mum and sisters,”

Kaur was only eight when her mother died of breast cancer, and a memory she always cherished was her mother’s long hair, which she said was a defining part of her identity. “I really wanted to emulate the way that my mother looked,” she said. Kaur recalled that her father, who was only 29 at the time, took her to the barber’s for a haircut. “I didn’t even know how to tie my hair.

She died before she taught me,” Kaur said. That was when she decided to turn to her paternal grandmother, who would apply different oils and ingredients on her hair through her early teens, before landing on a formula that Kaur continued to use as an adult and is the current formulation of the ByErim oil. Those experiences formed the foundations of Kaur’s social media journey, where she shared her story of growing up without a mum, as well as how she learnt to take care of herself as a woman.

“I wanted to create a shortcut for any girls or boys that had grown up without a mum, which is why I started to speak about that experience on my page,” she explained. After gaining 100,000 followers in 2019, she decided to monetize her social media and build ByErim as a homage to both her mother and grandmother while also capitalizing on a growing social media trend.

Hair oiling is an Indian tradition recorded in ancient Sanskrit medicinal texts like Charaka Samhita, and passed on through the centuries. Indian women are taught by their mothers and grandmothers to massage oils into their hair from a young age. With the influx of Indian immigrants to the U.S. and Europe since the 20th century, hair-oiling has transcended India’s borders. Cosmopolitan U.K.’s deputy beauty editor Hanna Ibraheem recently wrote that having her hair oiled as a child resurfaced memories of shame about her identity.