Family values: Meet KETISH, the Kattan sisters' new investment

When Emaan Abbass first met her industry hero Huda Kattan, the superstar influencer and founder of Huda Beauty, she knew it was a relationship that was going to be special.

While working at Sephora as a Supply Chain Manager (and self proclaimed Huda Beauty campaign manager) Abbass managed to convince the team to allow her to spend an afternoon at the make-up brand’s Dubai HQ while on holiday from California in 2016.

It was a meeting that would change Abbass’ life.

Just one month later, Abbass moved to the UAE to become a full-time Huda Beauty employee in product development.

“I just remember leaving that meeting feeling like ‘wow, she’s even more incredible than what she’s like on the screen’,” Abbass tells Cosmetics Business about her first encounter with Huda. “I needed to be a part of this magic that she was creating.”

Abbass is no longer a Huda Beauty employee – now, she is the founder of feminine wellness brand KETISH.

But she remains close with the Huda Beauty team as KETISH is the first start-up to be developed by HB Angels, a seed investment fund launched by HB Investments, the private investment office of Huda, and Huda Beauty co-founders Mona and Alya Kattan.

Abbass had been exploring the idea of launching a feminine wellness brand for a number of years, but plucked up the courage to turn her idea into a reality after Huda announced the creation of a US$10m fund to support female entrepreneurs.

“I remember that she posted a video on social media back in 2017 about starting a fund to support young entrepreneurs that had business ideas for mission-based brands,” explains Abbass.

“When Huda was starting out, she didn’t have a ton of backing, or the types of resources that she needed to launch her brand and she really wanted to pay it forward and to start investing.

I just remember watching that video, and I’d always wanted to start a feminine wellness brand, but I never really put pen to paper until I saw that video.”