If you ask YouTuber and beauty founder Deepica Mutyala what she wants for her brand Live Tinted, she’ll tell you: she wants it to represent a “medium” makeup movement.
Live Tinted, founded in 2018, arrived on the scene as the heyday of full-coverage, artistry-focused makeup routines was coming to a close. Amid a backlash to larger-than-life personalities and scandals like James Charles, Jeffree Star and Tati Westbrook, customers gravitated to TikTok and the “That Girl” and “Clean Girl” simplistic beauty and wellness trends. Now, a kind-of homeostasis has emerged between the different makeup philosophies, and that’s where Live Tinted resides.
“There’s always going to be trends,” said Mutyala, who is also CEO of Live Tinted. “Out first slogan was ‘For every shade in between’ but it didn’t only represent people whose skin tone was in-between but also people who want some [makeup] coverage because they don’t have flawless skin but don’t want to layer too much on.”
It’s a narrative that has resonated with customers, retailers and investors. As of 2023, Live Tinted raised $15 million, including $10 million in a Series A, according to WWD. Furthermore, it’s now expanding nationally to all 1,400 Ulta Beauty stores nationwide after first selling online in 2021. The brand has sold over 3.5 million units and has experienced a 147% compound annual growth rate in retail sales over four years, according to Mutyala.
To promote its expansion at Ulta Beauty, Live Tinted debuted its first commercial on Monday, January 21, which will be advertised across streaming channels and paid and unpaid social media. In the 90-second commercial titled, “It Feels Good to Be Seen,” two girls play with makeup when one of them, a Black girl, realizes none of the makeup matches her skin tone. Flashing forward to the young girl as a woman, her daughter encourages her to go to Ulta Beauty with her and shop from Live Tinted where the mother’s friend from before also shops with her own daughter. The idea is that beauty is inclusive and communal, and can be a positive outlet for shared experiences.
The commercial is inspired by Mutyala’s own experiences. As a woman of color, Mutyala had a YouTube video of her go viral (it now has 11 million views) in 2015 when she demonstrated how to conceal dark under eye circles using red lipstick. While the use of red lipstick may seem a novel approach to a beauty issue, people of color have long had to innovate and be creative with products in order to find items that worked for them. So when it came to launching Live Tinted in 2018, Mutyala wanted to address this gap in the market.
“Live Tinted is a gift to my younger self as a South Asian girl growing up in Texas and not seeing a beauty brand created for me,” she said. “I never dreamt of creating a brand just for brown girls or just for people of color, but I did want to create a brand that had them at the center.”
The brand first launched exclusively at Ulta Beauty after participating in the retailer’s Sparked program to provide mentorship, retail support, tailored marketing support, and community-building to young independent beauty brands. Over 30 brands that have gone through the program have since begun selling products at Ulta Beauty.
“As the first South Asian-owned makeup brand at Ulta Beauty, Live Tinted has deeply resonated with our diverse community of beauty enthusiasts, especially through its inclusive ethos and versatile products,” said Jessica Phillips, vp of merchandising at Ulta Beauty via email. “While success can look different for each brand, there are shared commonalities that resonate most with our [customers], such as scalability, transparency, relatability, simplicity and results.”
Live Tinted’s commitment to “medium” beauty and in-between people is also taking place against the backdrop of another upheaval in the beauty industry. TikTok briefly went dark ahead of President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, but the executive order gave the Chinese-owned app a 75-day extension to comply with a law banning the app if it is not sold. Live Tinted has just under 100,000 TikTok followers, but this is less than half of its followers on Instagram at 263,000 or Mutyala’s own personal YouTube account at 331,000 subscribers. But TikTok had been on the 2025 growth roadmap for Live Tinted as a marketing channel and given the success other brands have experienced on TikTok Shop.
“You can’t be dependent on one channel across the board in any capacity, whether it’s social or a sales channel; you have to create a business that can withstand if something like [a ban] happens,” said Mutyala.