L'Oreal Brandstorm: My Adventure & Lessons learnt.

On a typical Friday at the University of Nairobi's Chiromo campus, a sudden blackout disrupted our Organic Chemistry lecture. Amidst the darkness, I stumbled upon a poster for L'Oreal Brandstorm 2023 in my galley; an exciting challenge to "Crack the New Codes of Beauty" using AI, ML, AR, AV, and the metaverse. Intrigued, I shared the opportunity with my friend & course mate Miriam who introduced Bradley, a data scientist and that's how we became a trio of innovators.

Together, we jumped into the challenge, hoping to make our mark. We submitted our project but unfortunately we never made it to the local selection. Although we didn't make it past the local selection, L'Oreal's boost program offered us a silver lining. Through Coursera courses, I dove into Augmented Reality, sparking the idea for my own startup. A big shoutout to L'Oreal for the boost!

We waited for the next challenge, L'Oreal Brandstorm 2024. And this year's theme did not disappoint. (I'm a Gen Z so let me just say, the theme was giving!) Reinventing the future of professional beauty through tech. It was all about Hair Tech.

We brought all our ideas together and came up with our project ,HairIQ-An AI Powered Smart comb that runs hair diagnosis and comes with a companion app for product recommendations. A seamless integration of Augmented beauty services, O+O(offline + online) experiences, VTO (Virtual Try On) and a whole gaming experience in the metaverse. We had so much fun brainstorming the entire process.

As we worked on our pitch video, we reached out for hair models. The response was overwhelming, and we ended up selecting four models with different hair types. Huge thanks to our friends Bryan Mutiso, Johnson Maina, and Jerry for helping with the videography and editing. Their skills got us to the local finals!

Check out our pitch video!!

Getting the email about making it to the local finals felt amazing. On April 18th, 2024, we faced the judges with our heads held high. We gave our presentation to a panel of very welcoming judges. Jean Christophe (JC), Jemimah Karuri, Nancy Irungu & Ben. Though we didn't make it to the next stage, making it to the top 10 out of 600 submissions was something to celebrate!

Our journey doesn't stop here. We're still determined to improve our hair tech idea and get it out there. L'Oreal Brandstorm has opened up new opportunities for us in the beauty tech world. We believe that one day our AI Powered smart comb will be in the market. It might not be this year but soon enough

Brandstorm 2024 worked out for us ,maybe not to the extent we wanted but we are super grateful and excited for L'Oreal Brandstorm 2025. Cheers to more innovation and fun in the beauty tech world!