How Divya Gugnani Scaled 5 SENS to a $1M+ Fragrance Brand in Its 1st Year
In this interview, Divya Gugnani, Founder and CEO of 5 SENS, shares how she built a clean fragrance brand to $1M+ in its first year—bootstrapped, community-led, and powered by TikTok. From navigating autoimmune challenges to redefining fragrance wardrobing, her journey shows you how purpose, product, and community can come together to turn mood into a movement.
My name is Divya Gugnani, and I am the Founder and CEO of 5 SENS. We create clean, accessible fine fragrances designed to capture your ever-changing energy. Think of it as your mood, bottled.
At 5 SENS, we are solving a problem the fragrance industry ignored for decades. Consumers want designer-quality fragrance without the sky-high price tag, and without sacrificing ingredient transparency or sustainability. We offer fine fragrances created with master French perfumers, in premium recyclable glass bottles, with high juice concentration at accessible price points.
We are also challenging the outdated idea of a single signature scent. Instead, we encourage fragrance wardrobing, and wearing your mood. Each scent has names like Life of the Party and Catch Feelings rather than traditional fragrance names. We are not just selling perfume. We are selling your mood getting a standing ovation.
What Inspired You to Start 5 SENS?
Fragrance and I have shared an inconsistent, on-again-off-again relationship for as long as I can remember. It started with duty-free perfume souvenirs my dad would bring back from business trips for my mother: little glass bottles that held the promise of far-off places. At 16, I discovered my first signature scent and savored every last spritz. Fragrance was always something laden with love.
Just as my romance with scent was reaching its peak, when I had graduated from a single fragrance to a painstakingly curated personal collection, life threw me a curveball. An autoimmune diagnosis brought severe allergies and reactions to my once-beloved beauty stash and treasured perfumes.
Starting from square one felt impossible. With limited options on my healing journey, I chose to create my own space in the beauty world: co-founding Wander Beauty to craft effortless, clean essentials. While I fell head-over-heels for clean makeup and skincare, my long-lost love affair with fragrance still lingered in my thoughts.
Then came Paris. Five transformative days in the City of Light changed everything. I met my now husband’s mother who, to put it simply, smelled absolutely divine. Day after day, a heavenly scent radiated from her, shifting and evolving in the most enchanting ways. I realized her enigmatic presence was not just captured in her revolving wardrobe or ever-changing hairstyles, it lived entirely within her scent.
Just like that, my understanding of personal fragrance was revolutionized forever. In my fifth venture as an entrepreneur, 5 SENS represents a well-rounded, truly sensory experience that transcends traditional perfume boundaries.
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Did You Have a Background in This Industry Before Starting Out?
I began my career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and later transitioned to institutional investing at Investcorp International and FirstMark Capital. That financial discipline and strategic thinking became foundational to how I approach building companies.
Before 5 SENS, I had already co-founded four companies across beauty, fashion, food, auto parts, and tech, with three successful exits. My previous venture, Wander Beauty, which I co-founded with supermodel Lindsay Ellingson, won over forty beauty awards and achieved global distribution before its sale. That experience in product development, retail distribution, and brand building gave me a strong playbook for launching 5 SENS.
Most importantly, I developed pattern recognition. Through my fund Concept to Co., I have invested my own capital in over eighty consumer brands. Seeing what works and what does not across categories has become my superpower.
How Did You Land Your First Few Customers?
I took a deeply personal approach to building our initial community. Instead of running ads or blasting generic outreach, I sent personalized voicenotes to influencers I genuinely admired. These were not scripted pitches. They were real messages explaining why I created 5 SENS, my autoimmune story, and why I thought they would connect with the brand. I shared my promise of blending and bottling their mood.
At the same time, I built an authentic community through storytelling on Instagram and TikTok, converting engaged followers through strategic email and SMS flows. Our customers did not just buy fragrance. They bought into a movement. Fragrance wardrobing resonated because so many people wanted fewer products that did more emotionally.
Word of mouth became our engine. When customers loved the product, they told their friends. They posted about it organically. They became advocates without being asked. I have learned across five companies that the best marketing is a product people cannot stop talking about.
My founder story resonated because it was real. I was not a celebrity licensing my name. I was a consumer who could not find what she needed, so she built it. That authenticity in the voicenotes, in the community, and in every touchpoint created the foundation for everything that came after.
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What Was Your Business Model When You Started, and Has It Changed Over Time?
We started with a clear thesis: clean, accessible, fine fragrance that captures your mood, bottled. Premium quality, accessible pricing, and full ingredient transparency. That core positioning has never changed.
What has evolved is our channel mix. We began as a DTC brand to validate demand and build community. We then added Sephora for the sensory trial component. TikTok Shop followed and became a critical channel for reaching our Gen Z and Millennial audience. Most recently, we launched on Amazon and have seen strong early growth there.
The evolution has been about meeting customers where they are. Some discover us on TikTok and buy immediately. Some discover us at Sephora. Others research on Amazon and trust the reviews. We have built for all of those journeys simultaneously.
What Was Your Exact Timeline to $1 Million in Revenue?
We reached $1 million in our 1st year through pure grassroots hustle. No massive ad budgets, just relentless relationship building and getting the product into the right hands.
We launched DTC and went all-in on influencer gifting, press outreach, and organic word of mouth. I was sending personalized DMs and voicenotes and gifting product to people I genuinely believed would love it. When people tried 5 SENS, they talked about it.
We then partnered with ipsy to produce a large run of our fragrance Catch Feelings, introducing the brand to their massive beauty subscriber base. That was a turning point. From there, we launched Sephora and so on.
All of this was bootstrapped with my own capital. No venture funding. That allowed us to build sustainably and maintain my founder vision.
What Was the Biggest Turning Point in Your Growth Journey?
TikTok. Full stop.
Partnering with creators for TikTok Lives, gifting TikTok affiliates, going live as a founder myself, and posting organic content on @5sensco really drove awareness and ultimately conversion for our brand in a way nothing else did.
There is something powerful about showing up authentically on a platform where people are actively discovering new products. When I went live as a founder, I could tell our story in real time, answer questions, and let people feel the passion behind 5 SENS. It was not polished or scripted. It was real. And that resonated.
The creator partnerships amplified everything. We gifted affiliates who genuinely loved fragrance and let them share their honest experiences. When their audiences saw authentic reactions to our scents, it built trust faster than any traditional ad campaign could. These were not paid endorsements that felt forced. They were real people discovering something they loved and wanting to share it.
What followed was a powerful flywheel. People discovered us on TikTok, visited our site or found us at Sephora, then came back to TikTok to share their own experiences. That loop of discovery felt organic, not manufactured.
TikTok also let us educate customers about fragrance wardrobing in a way that clicked. Short-form video is perfect for showing how you can wear different scents for different moods. The concept made sense visually and emotionally in a way that static content never captured.
What made TikTok successful for us is that we did not treat it like a marketing channel. We treated it like a community. We showed up consistently, engaged authentically, and let the product speak for itself. That approach fueled organic growth across every channel.
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What’s One Thing About Hitting First $1M That No One Talks About?
That it does not feel like you think it will. When you are grinding toward that milestone, you imagine some triumphant moment, champagne, celebration, a sense of I have product/market fit. The reality is that by the time you hit $1 million, you are already focused on the next challenge. The goal posts move immediately.
What nobody tells you is that the internal experience of success is often indistinguishable from the internal experience of struggle. You are still solving problems every day. The stakes just get higher.
Learning to pause, to celebrate milestones, to actually feel the wins is a skill I am still developing. Purpose-driven business helps. When customers tell us that our fragrances impact their mood and mental health, that impact feels real in a way revenue numbers do not.
Key Takeaways
Divya Gugnani’s journey to building 5 SENS into a $1M+ brand is a powerful reminder that the most resonant businesses are born from real needs, not market trends. By turning personal challenges into purpose, she reimagined what modern fragrance could look and feel like—clean, accessible, emotionally driven, and community-led.
Rather than chasing rapid scale through paid hype, Divya focused on authenticity, storytelling, and product excellence. From grassroots outreach and founder-led TikTok engagement to strategic retail partnerships, every growth decision was anchored in trust and long-term brand value. That discipline not only fueled early traction but created a foundation for sustainable expansion.
Her story reinforces a core truth of the Zero to Million journey: when you deeply understand your customer, stay true to your vision, and build with intention, momentum follows. For founders navigating their own path to the first million, 5 SENS stands as proof that purpose, persistence, and presence can turn an idea into a movement—and a brand into a lasting business.
👉 Inspired by Divya Gugnani’s journey building 5 SENS into a $1M+ clean fragrance brand? Share this story with a fellow entrepreneur—this might be the spark they need to build a brand rooted in authenticity, community, and purpose.
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