The Empathy Advantage

To Fill A Niche In The Beauty Aisles, Live Tinted Founder Deepica Mutyala, Bba ’11, Built A Mission-First Company Culture

By Suzi Morales   

Photograph By Dustin Snipes

Deepica Mutyala, BBA ’11, was just 16 when she got the idea that she could change the beauty industry. She began doodling names for her future beauty brand into the margins of her school notebooks. She continued nurturing that dream after enrolling at the
McCombs School of Business and studying marketing. She joined the school’s team in the L’Oréal Brandstorm competition, an annual innovation contest sponsored by the global cosmetics giant. Her team won, leading to an internship at L’Oréal’s New York office, and “changed the whole trajectory of my life,” she says. 

A few years later, Mutyala launched a YouTube channel, @deepica. In the second video, which she posted 10 years ago, Mutyala demonstrated a beauty hack to help color correct the darkened area under her eyes — using red lipstick, of all things. It went viral, capturing 11 million views and putting her on track for the career she wanted. 

A Bold Leap Into Entrepreneurship

As the teenage daughter of Indian immigrants growing up in Sugar Land, Texas, Mutyala had been captivated by cosmetics but noticed something missing on the beauty aisles. “I would see a very specific standard of beauty that didn’t include someone who looked like me. I would pick up products, and my mom would buy foundation bottles that were never my shade,”
Mutyala recalls. 

She saw a way to change that.

Mutyala says her parents — her father, with a career in medicine — and her mother, an entrepreneur — supported her ambition to launch her own beauty brand, but hoped she’d follow a more traditional path than the one she chose. She was poised for “a blowout fight” with her parents when she quit her first job as a brand development manager at beauty subscription box curator Birchbox. How would she explain her choice to leave a steady job? Instead of a fight, her father handed her a check — which she promptly tore up — and told her, “Don’t think of this as me giving money to my daughter, but think of this as me investing in a businesswoman that I believe in.”

Once having chafed at the term “influencer,” Mutyala came to embrace what it taught her about entrepreneurship. “It gave me the entrepreneurial experience that set me up for the groundwork of building a company and being a CEO,” says Mutyala, “because at the end of the day, being an influencer is another version of being an entrepreneur. You’re your own assistant. You’re your own manager. You’re your own social media team, your marketing, your operations.”

In 2018, she founded Live Tinted, a cosmetics brand dedicated to creating high-quality products for all skin tones, with beauty veteran Bobbi Brown as one of the first investors. Other early investors included Bonobos founder Andy Dunn and ClassPass founder Payal Kadakia. 

Mutyala has since partnered with major brands such as Estée Lauder, LVMH, and Unilever. She has earned recognition from leading publications, including being named a Time magazine Next Generation Leader. She even helped spearhead cultural milestones, including the creation of Mattel’s first-ever South Asian CEO Barbie doll.

Live Tinted made history at Ulta Beauty as the first South Asian-owned makeup brand on its shelves. Today, it is one of the retailer’s fastest-growing prestige brands. In 2023, Live Tinted received $10 million series A investment from Monogram Capital Partners, according to a Women’s Wear Daily report. 

While it would be easy to paint Mutyala as the typical influencer-turned-beauty boss, that would overlook the discipline, authenticity, and drive that propelled her forward. She would tap those skills to lead her growing company.

From the beginning, she says, Live Tinted has aimed to turn convention upside down. For example, beauty brands have traditionally arranged skin tones in their product lines in numerical order, from fairest (No. 1) to darkest. Live Tinted does the opposite. This might seem like a minor difference, but it is part of Mutyala’s effort to take a unique approach. “It’s the little things we can do to flip things in the industry on its head, to just know that we will never diverge from our mission, even as we scale and grow our customer base.” 

Leading with Empathy and Vision

Still, Mutyala says she appreciates the lessons she learned from legacy brands such as L’Oréal about working in an environment that provides stability for employees and takes advantage of tried-and-true processes.

As her company grew, Mutyala says she courted investors whose advice and experience would be just as valuable as their funding. She says part of her leadership style is listening and learning from others. Even now, when Mutyala is overwhelmed, she says she will text Brown, who often reminds Mutyala to “chill, breathe.”

Mutyala says she also listens closely to employees to show them she values their contributions and their professional development. She wants them to see a career path at Live Tinted.   

“I lead with transparency and empathy, and I think people really value and appreciate that in today’s world, especially a younger working professional,” Mutyala says. “When it comes to executives who have had a lot of experience, they find it really refreshing to have somebody who operates with no ego. I have no problem with someone taking over a part of the business that I previously owned, because I recognize that they are better at it.”

Although she believes in the “power and beauty” of bringing employees together in person, Mutyala also embraces the flexibility of an all-remote employee base. The company’s budget includes funds for in-person gatherings. Other company initiatives to attract and retain younger workers include unlimited paid time off and a culture committee that encourages employees to share ideas for strengthening engagement.

“Flexibility has been a big learning curve for me, especially as it relates to a post-COVID world and being a remote company,” she says. “I’m learning and figuring out what the right systems are for us as a business.” She remains open to pivoting to grow the business through trial, error, and accountability. While she values the experience of others, she remembers the teenage girl in Sugar Land who just wanted to find the right shade of foundation.

Mutyala says, “You can learn from the mentors and founders and advisers in your life, but it is more important than ever, I think, to have blinders on and stay true to why I started my company, and recognize that every other company exists already, and mine is the one that I’m uniquely building to be here in the world today.”

Scaling with Heart and Hustle

Mutyala’s first hires were fans of the brand. Now, with 22 employees and headquarters in Los Angeles, she recruits people who complement her talents. Using the skills she cultivated at McCombs, she remains deeply involved in marketing. 

“I think the struggle for me now, if anything, is letting go of parts of the business, because I recognize that there are people who can do it better than me, but I learned how to be so scrappy and work on such an agile and small budget, because I had to,” she says. “Now it’s about learning how to scale a company.”

Mutyala maintains a robust support system including cosmetics mogul Brown, an executive coach, a therapist, and, of course, her family. Mutyala’s social media feeds include many videos of her parents, like the first time they saw Live Tinted in an Ulta store. Her mother exclaims, “I’m proud of you!” and kisses the display sign bearing her daughter’s picture. 

“I learned my business acumen and savviness from my mother and my work ethic from my dad,” Mutyala says. “I feel like I got this beautiful example on both ends to show me that you can’t do anything in life without working really hard, but also take those risks and go for it, because you were meant to do something different and big.”

I lead with transparency and empathy, and I think people really value and appreciate
that in today’s world.”

— Deepica Mutyala