Three ITB students, Angela Thrisananda Kusuma, Salma Yasifa, and Yumna Dzakiyyah, made impressive achievements in the international arena. While representing ITB and Indonesia in the Brandstorm International Final, they managed to become one of the three winning teams, beating 83,000 other teams. The team, which they named ‘Mon Soleil’, won the 2022 L’Oréal Brandstorm in the Tech Track category with their hormone-based hyper-personalized skincare innovation called “HyperSync”. To hear the story behind this success, the Marketing and Communications team of SBM ITB interviewed the Mon Soleil team on Saturday (02/07/2022).
The creation of this innovation stems from a podcast that Yumna listens to on the go. “I sometimes listen to podcasts on the road. One time, there was one podcast that talked about skin problems due to hormones, where they say they had to take hormone tests many times, which is expensive. Then, I felt that the hormone was very influential on the skin, so I discussed it with Salma and Angela,” said Yumna. “After we know from journals that there is a link between skin health and hormones, we contact experts for validation,” he added.
Yumna also mentioned several ITB lecturers who helped them in the HyperSync development process. “We contacted the SITH lecturer who specializes in endocrinology, Dr. Lulu Lusianti Fitri, M.Sc., also SF Lecturer Amirah Adlia, S.Si., M.Sc., for initial validation. After that, we validated our device to an STEI Lecturer, Isa Anshori, Ph.D., and we even went to a dermatologist to validate this idea. So, we are multidisciplinary, and we get a lot of help from professionals, lecturers, even L’Oréal Indonesia,” said Yumna.
Apart from the support from ITB, Salma thinks that this achievement is thanks to their different backgrounds. “Our team’s background is diverse. I’m from the Department of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Yumna from Electrical Engineering, and Angela from Entrepreneurship, so we can divide roles based on the knowledge we have. Our idea is hormone-based and digital, so the hormone part, such as the type of product or serum is my responsibility, technical and digital is Yumna’s part, and for Angela, business, marketing or partnerships,” said Salma.
Angel also talked about the formation of the team. “We met at the same non-profit organization in 2020, so we have known each other since 2 years ago. At that time I was the leader of the organization, while Yumna and Salma were in the same division. Salma and I often teamed up for competitions, we have also participated in Brandstorm 2021 but did not win. After that, the three of us decided to take part in L’Oréal Brandstorm 2022,” said Angela.
“Because L’Oréal Brandstorm is an innovation competition, it is different from regular business case competition. We must be able to convey the innovation end-to-end from the technical side to the business side. Thus, our diverse backgrounds complement each part,” Angela added.
However, their different backgrounds also become one of obstacles in their journey. “We have different majors, different activities, so it’s difficult to match the schedule. To deal with this problem, we share schedules with each other, so if, for example, I’m busy with my thesis this week, we’ll change the schedule. Or if Yumna or Salma are busy with practicum, we will work at night,” said Angela.
Another challenge that Mon Soleil faced while developing HyperSync was the complexity of the product. “There are many things we don’t know or only know on the surface, so we have to validate it with the experts. And that becomes a challenge, as in how do we find people who are capable to validate our idea, and how do we communicate with them,” said Angela.
Mon Soleil’s journey with HyperSync will continue in Paris. As the winner of L’Oréal Brandstorm 2022, Mon Soleil has the opportunity to start Intrapreneurship under the auspices of the world’s largest startup campus, Station F. Angela hopes that, through this opportunity, Mon Soleil can meet many experts and gain a lot of knowledge to mature HyperSync. Angela aim for HyperSync to become an integrated all-in-one solution to prevent skin problems that may arise in the future. Through HyperSync, people can invest in the health of their skin in one device, aligning with HyperSync’s slogan, “One test, one device, long-term result.”
