Category: 3. Business

In partnership with Startup India and Nykaa, the program awards four winners funding, mentorship, and platforms to scale their beauty brands

NEW YORK & MUMBAI, India–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) announced yesterday the winners of BEAUTY&YOU India 2025. This year’s program, supported by the Government of India’s Startup India and launch partner Nykaa, highlighted the emerging talent reimagining the future of beauty in India.

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Stéphane de La Faverie, President and CEO, The Estée Lauder Companies said: “When we launched BEAUTY&YOU, our vision was simple yet powerful — to discover and support visionary entrepreneurs transforming India’s beauty landscape. This year’s winners reflect the incredible creativity, ambition, and innovation shaping one of the world’s most dynamic markets. The Estée Lauder Companies is proud to champion these bold new entrepreneurs who are redefining the future of beauty in India and beyond.”

Since its launch in 2022, the company’s BEAUTY&YOU India program has grown into one of the most recognized platforms for beauty entrepreneurship in India. Over the past four application cycles, it has attracted nearly 2,500 applications from 150+ cities across India and around the world, with the majority from women entrepreneurs.

The 2025 winners, named across four categories, were selected for their bold ideas and innovative products that reflect the dynamism of India’s beauty ecosystem—from climate-tailored products to breakthrough encapsulation technology and inclusive makeup. Each will receive funding, along with mentorship from global experts, national visibility through Startup India, and brand-building and distribution support from Nykaa.

2025 BEAUTY&YOU India Winners

• GROW: Best in-market beauty brand
  
  Antinorm, Aparna Saxena, Founder & CEO: For high-performance, climate-tailored, and multitasking products that replace complex routines for busy working women.

• IMAGINE: Best pre-launch beauty concept
  
  Mimiq, Harsha Soundararajan, Founder: For inclusive, high-performance, and long-lasting complexion products for people with visible skin differences, such as vitiligo.

• BREAKTHROUGH: Best in innovation
  
  Hitech Formulations, Jaspreet Singh Gulati, Founder & Director: For breakthrough encapsulation technology that delivers formulations for pigmentation, anti-aging, and antioxidant-driven skin care.

• VISIONARY WOMEN’S AWARD: Recognizing a trailblazing woman entrepreneur in partnership with Startup India
  
  Sohrai, Khanak Gupta, Co-Founder: For delivering high-performing products using an indigenous ingredient, Mahua, that is sourced through local partnerships that create economic opportunities for tribal communities and women.

The 2025 program debuted the BEAUTY&YOU Visionary Women’s Award, presented by The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) and Startup India. The award builds upon a first-of-its-kind partnership between ELC and Startup India, formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), reflecting a shared commitment to supporting Indian entrepreneurs and women-led startups.

Nadine Graf, President of EMEA, UK & Ireland, and Emerging Markets at The Estée Lauder Companies, said: “The winners of BEAUTY&YOU India 2025 reflect the entrepreneurial spirit at the heart of The Estée Lauder Companies. India continues to inspire us—not only as a dynamic and fast-growing beauty market, but as a source of creativity and bold ideas. Every journey begins with a vision and a dream, and this program is about empowering founders to turn those into reality. I am especially proud of the new Visionary Women’s Award, which celebrates the ambition, ingenuity, and leadership of women founders.”

Shri Sanjiv Singh, Joint Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, added: “Our partnership with Estée Lauder for BEAUTY&YOU India reflects a shared commitment to strengthening India’s startup ecosystem and fostering innovation across sectors. This year’s introduction of the Visionary Women’s Award in collaboration with Startup India is particularly meaningful, celebrating the women whose ideas and leadership continue to redefine entrepreneurship. My warm congratulations to all the winners as they carry Bharat’s spirit of innovation to the world.”

The 2025 finalists were evaluated by an esteemed jury of beauty and business leaders including Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, The Estée Lauder Companies; Rohan Vaziralli, General Manager, The Estée Lauder Companies, India; Nivruti Rai, CEO, Invest India; Katrina Kaif, Actor and Co-Founder, Kay Beauty; and Anchit Nayar, Executive Director & CEO, Nykaa Beauty. The final event featured The Estée Lauder Companies’ Stéphane de La Faverie, President & CEO; William P. Lauder, Chair, Board of Directors; and Nadine Graf, President, EMEA, UK&I, and Emerging Markets; as well as Nykaa’s Falguni Nayar, Chairperson, MD& CEO.

Rohan Vaziralli, General Manager India, The Estée Lauder Companies, India said: “For me, the power of BEAUTY&YOU lies in unlocking possibilities – for entrepreneurs, consumers, and the broader beauty ecosystem – as we continue to build and imagine new futures together. The founders we celebrated tonight are scaling with ambition, setting new standards for Indian beauty on the world stage, and proving that India will be central to defining beauty’s next chapter.”

Anchit Nayar, Executive Director & CEO of Nykaa Beauty said: “As India’s leading beauty destination, Nykaa has been at the forefront of building the country’s beauty ecosystem—from discovery and consumer insights to digital storytelling and omnichannel retail. Through our partnership with The Estée Lauder Companies on BEAUTY&YOU India, we’re extending that ecosystem to nurture early-stage founders with the tools, visibility, and guidance they need to scale. This initiative reflects our shared commitment to empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs who will define the future of Indian beauty, both at home and on the global stage.”

BEAUTY&YOU India celebrates the creativity and vision of founders who are reshaping what beauty can mean for consumers in India and beyond. Alumni have gone on to launch new products, secure venture capital, build partnerships with leading retailers, and gain national attention on platforms like Shark Tank India, reinforcing the program’s role as a driver of industry transformation.

For more information, visit www.beautyandyouawards.com.

About BEAUTY&YOU India

Created by The Estée Lauder Companies’ New Incubation Ventures, BEAUTY&YOU India aims to discover, propel, and support the next generation of India-focused beauty entrepreneurs. Launched in 2022, the program offers financial support, mentorship, and strategic guidance to entrepreneurs shaping the future of beauty in India, helping them achieve scale and global relevance.

About The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. is one of the world’s leading manufacturers, marketers, and sellers of quality skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products, and is a steward of luxury and prestige brands globally. The company’s products are sold in approximately 150 countries and territories under brand names including: Estée Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Lab Series, Origins, M·A·C, La Mer, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Darphin Paris, TOM FORD, Smashbox, AERIN Beauty, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, GLAMGLOW, KILIAN PARIS, Too Faced, Dr.Jart+, the DECIEM family of brands, including The Ordinary and NIOD, and BALMAIN Beauty.

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Media Relations:

Brendan Riley

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Source: The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

Ammonia is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world, used mostly as fertilizer, but also for the production of some plastics, textiles, and other applications. Its production, through processes that require high heat and pressure, accounts for up to 20 percent of all the greenhouse gases from the entire chemical industry, so efforts have been underway worldwide to find ways to reduce those emissions.

Now, researchers at MIT have come up with a clever way of combining two different methods of producing the compound that minimizes waste products, that, when combined with some other simple upgrades, could reduce the greenhouse emissions from production by as much as 63 percent, compared to the leading “low-emissions” approach being used today.

The new approach is described in the journal Energy & Fuels, in a paper by MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Director William H. Green, graduate student Sayandeep Biswas, MITEI Director of Research Randall Field, and two others.

“Ammonia has the most carbon dioxide emissions of any kind of chemical,” says Green, who is the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering. “It’s a very important chemical,” he says, because its use as a fertilizer is crucial to being able to feed the world’s population.

Until late in the 19th century, the most widely used source of nitrogen fertilizer was mined deposits of bat or bird guano, mostly from Chile, but that source was beginning to run out, and there were predictions that the world would soon be running short of food to sustain the population. But then a new chemical process, called the Haber-Bosch process after its inventors, made it possible to make ammonia out of nitrogen from the air and hydrogen, which was mostly derived from methane. But both the burning of fossil fuels to provide the needed heat and the use of methane to make the hydrogen led to massive climate-warming emissions from the process.

To address this, two newer variations of ammonia production have been developed: so-called “blue ammonia,” where the greenhouse gases are captured right at the factory and then sequestered deep underground, and “green ammonia,” produced by a different chemical pathway, using electricity instead of fossil fuels to hydrolyze water to make hydrogen.

Blue ammonia is already beginning to be used, with a few plants operating now in Louisiana, Green says, and the ammonia mostly being shipped to Japan, “so that’s already kind of commercial.” Other parts of the world are starting to use green ammonia, especially in places that have lots of hydropower, solar, or wind to provide inexpensive electricity, including a giant plant now under construction in Saudi Arabia.

But in most places, both blue and green ammonia are still more expensive than the traditional fossil-fuel-based version, so many teams around the world have been working on ways to cut these costs as much as possible so that the difference is small enough to be made up through tax subsidies or other incentives.

The problem is growing, because as the population grows, and as wealth increases, there will be ever-increasing demands for nitrogen fertilizer. At the same time, ammonia is a promising substitute fuel to power hard-to-decarbonize transportation such as cargo ships and heavy trucks, which could lead to even greater needs for the chemical.

“It definitely works” as a transportation fuel, by powering fuel cells that have been demonstrated for use by everything from drones to barges and tugboats and trucks, Green says. “People think that the most likely market of that type would be for shipping,” he says, “because the downside of ammonia is it’s toxic and it’s smelly, and that makes it slightly dangerous to handle and to ship around.” So its best uses may be where it’s used in high volume and in relatively remote locations, like the high seas. In fact, the International Maritime Organization will soon be voting on new rules that might give a strong boost to the ammonia alternative for shipping.

The key to the new proposed system is to combine the two existing approaches in one facility, with a blue ammonia factory next to a green ammonia factory. The process of generating hydrogen for the green ammonia plant leaves a lot of leftover oxygen that just gets vented to the air. Blue ammonia, on the other hand, uses a process called autothermal reforming that requires a source of pure oxygen, so if there’s a green ammonia plant next door, it can use that excess oxygen.

“Putting them next to each other turns out to have significant economic value,” Green says. This synergy could help hybrid “blue-green ammonia” facilities serve as an important bridge toward a future where eventually green ammonia, the cleanest version, could finally dominate. But that future is likely decades away, Green says, so having the combined plants could be an important step along the way.

“It might be a really long time before [green ammonia] is actually attractive” economically, he says. “Right now, it’s nowhere close, except in very special situations.” But the combined plants “could be a really appealing concept, and maybe a good way to start the industry,” because so far only small, standalone demonstration plants of the green process are being built.

“If green or blue ammonia is going to become the new way of making ammonia, you need to find ways to make it relatively affordable in a lot of countries, with whatever resources they’ve got,” he says. This new proposed combination, he says, “looks like a really good idea that can help push things along. Ultimately, there’s got to be a lot of green ammonia plants in a lot of places,” and starting out with the combined plants, which could be more affordable now, could help to make that happen. The team has filed for a patent on the process.

Although the team did a detailed study of both the technology and the economics that show the system has great promise, Green points out that “no one has ever built one. We did the analysis, it looks good, but surely when people build the first one, they’ll find funny little things that need some attention,” such as details of how to start up or shut down the process. “I would say there’s plenty of additional work to do to make it a real industry.” But the results of this study, which shows the costs to be much more affordable than existing blue or green plants in isolation, “definitely encourages the possibility of people making the big investments that would be needed to really make this industry feasible.”

This proposed integration of the two methods “improves efficiency, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and lowers overall cost,” says Kevin van Geem, a professor in the Center for Sustainable Chemistry at Ghent University, who was not associated with this research. “The analysis is rigorous, with validated process models, transparent assumptions, and comparisons to literature benchmarks. By combining techno-economic analysis with emissions accounting, the work provides a credible and balanced view of the trade-offs.”

He adds that, “given the scale of global ammonia production, such a reduction could have a highly impactful effect on decarbonizing one of the most emissions-intensive chemical industries.”

The research team also included MIT postdoc Angiras Menon and MITEI research lead Guiyan Zang. The work was supported by IHI Japan through the MIT Energy Initiative and the Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability. 

A new study from McGill University is shedding light on how patients with soft tissue sarcoma, a rare cancer affecting connective tissues, perceive their health and quality of life (QOL) 1 year after surgery.

The findings, published in the Journal of Surgical Oncology, underscore that returning to normal life extends far beyond physical recovery, with social engagement, meaningful activity, and emotional well-being emerging as critical factors. As survivorship grows, wrote the researchers, integrating whole-person care, from functional restoration to emotional resilience, will be key to helping patients with sarcoma truly reclaim their lives.

Soft tissue sarcoma primarily strikes adults in their working years and is typically treated with radiation therapy followed by wide surgical resection. While this approach improves survival, it can cause lasting impairments, such as tissue damage, wound complications, and mobility limitations. Until now, most studies assessing patient outcomes have focused narrowly on physical function using the Toronto Extremity Salvage Score (TESS), a widely used assessment tool for patients following surgery for musculoskeletal tumors.² However, researchers say this measure misses key dimensions of recovery.

To capture a more complete picture, the McGill team used 2 patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) on 276 patients: the Reintegration to Normal Living Index (RNLI), which assesses perceived health and social reintegration, and the EuroQol-5D-3L (EQ-5D), which measures health-related QOL (HRQOL) across mobility, pain, and emotional well-being.

The researchers applied the Wilson-Cleary Model, a framework linking biological symptoms, functional status, health perceptions, and overall QOL, to evaluate how these factors interact.

Both tools showed strong reliability (RNLI α = .91; EQ-5D α = .74) and excellent model fit, validating their use in this population. Notably, pain and participation in daily activities were major drivers of perceived health and HRQOL, explaining over half of the variance in patient well-being.

At 12 months post-surgery, many patients still struggled with recreational activities, family roles, and travel, factors that had a greater impact on QOL than physical limitations alone.

“In other words, it was not the physical restrictions themselves (e.g., being unable to walk very far), but the implications of the restrictions that seemed most bothersome,” explained the researchers. Nearly half (49%) reported moderate-to-severe anxiety or depression, despite access to psychosocial support services, compared to just 12% in the general population.

These findings, wrote the researchers, highlight the need for holistic rehabilitation, incorporating occupational therapy to help patients adapt activities and mental health care to address distress that may impede recovery.

The authors recommend three key strategies for improving long-term outcomes, including maximizing functional restoration through tailored rehabilitation programs, encouraging participation in fulfilling activities, even in modified forms, and implementing routine distress screening to identify patients struggling with anxiety or depression.

“Moreover, given the systemic restraints many physicians face, occupational therapists and mental health professionals may need to play a more active role in routine soft tissue sarcoma care,” wrote the researchers. “Occupational therapists can help identify hindrances in functional restoration, make pragmatic environmental adjustments, and introduce adaptive equipment.”

Given that health perceptions explained 52% of HRQOL variance, addressing psychosocial barriers is as essential as physical therapy, noted the group. The study also validated the Wilson-Cleary Model as a robust framework for understanding patient recovery and guiding care.

The research team acknowledges limitations, including potential underreporting of pain and reliance on the older EQ-5D-3L measure. Still, the results underscore a pressing message: recovery from sarcoma is not just physical; it’s deeply social and psychological.

References

1. Andersen NJ, Bergeron C, Turcotte R, Körner A. Health perceptions and HRQL with soft-tissue sarcoma at 12 months post-op: using the Wilson-Cleary model to evaluate the measurement properties of the RNLI and EQ-5D-3L. J Surg Oncol. Published online September 14, 2025. doi:10.1002/jso.70101

2. Clayer M, Doyle S, Sangha N, Grimer R. The Toronto Extremity Salvage Score in unoperated controls: an age, gender, and country comparison. Sarcoma. 2012;2012:717213. doi:10.1155/2012/717213

This year, General Mills has an incredible lineup of new and returning Halloween-ready goodies that are perfect for every ghostly gathering. Whether you’re looking to fill trick-or-treat bags with exciting surprises, pack festive lunchboxes for school or simply want to add some frightening flair to your family celebrations, our Halloween line-up is designed to bring the boo! We’ve got frightfully fun new snacks making their debut, alongside beloved returning favorites that fans look forward to every year.

Make sure to add these must-have items to your shopping list and get ready to impress all the little monsters and goblins who come knocking at your door — or simply treat yourself to the spirit of the season!

Trick-or-Treating Fun

Key Facts

What Else Did The Fed Say?

A “majority” of participants at the FOMC meeting emphasized “upside risks” to inflation and noted that, while risks to the job market had risen, an uptick in unemployment and a “sharp deterioration” in labor market conditions were unlikely. Officials said they would continue to weigh the risks to both inflation and employment while considering how to adjust monetary policy.

What To Watch For

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who said last month the central bank shifted its concerns from stubborn inflation to a weakening job market, will speak Thursday at 8:30 a.m. EDT to open a bank conference in Washington, D.C. Fed governors Michelle Bowman and Michael Barr are also scheduled to speak.

Key Background

The Fed voted 11-1 in September for a quarter-point interest rate cut—the first cut since December. Fed Governor Stephen Miran, appointed to the role by President Donald Trump just before the central bank’s meeting, was the lone vote against the quarter-point reduction, instead arguing in favor of a half-point cut. Trump has pressured Powell and the Fed to cut interest rates by as much as 2%, repeatedly calling Powell “TOO LATE.” Fed officials have shown a willingness to lower interest rates at least twice this year, though Powell has upheld a cautious approach to policy as unemployment rises and inflation remains well above the Fed’s 2% goal. Fed governors Philip Jefferson and Bowman have raised concerns about the weakening labor market as a reason to lower interest rates, as Bowman argued a “shock could tip it into a sudden and significant deterioration.”

Further Reading

ForbesFed’s Powell Cites Weakening Job Market For Interest Rate CutBy Ty Roush