When Anch Thukral arrived in Melbourne in 2019, entrepreneurship was not the plan.
With a background in biotechnology, she had come to Australia to complete a Master of Teaching at Australian Catholic University. She worked in retail and hospitality to cover international student fees and living expenses, balancing work and university with months of unpaid teaching placements.
At the time, success looked relatively simple: become a science teacher, earn a steady income and know what the next month would look like.
Today, Anch is still connected to teaching, but she is also the founder behind Australian beauty brand KASSANOVA — and, for the first time, she is stepping out from behind the brand she deliberately built in relative anonymity.
“I wanted people to get to know the brand first,” Anch says.
That is about to change.
With KASSANOVA 2.0 launching on 16 November, Anch is appearing in a KASSANOVA campaign for the first time, marking a new chapter for both founder and brand.
From stability to something of her own
Becoming a full-time teacher gave Anch something she had worked hard to achieve: stability.
It also gave her room to think about what she wanted beyond it.
After years spent juggling study, work, bills and placements, Anch began rediscovering small routines she had previously pushed aside. One of those was skincare.
Taking time over her skincare at the end of the day became a simple pleasure, but it also prompted a question.
Why did shopping for intimate care feel so clinical when the rest of the beauty world could feel enjoyable, indulgent and beautifully presented?
The question stayed with her.
Eventually, it became KASSANOVA.
Anch used her savings and teaching income to fund the launch, built the website herself and drew on her science background when discussing ingredients and formulations with suppliers.
There was no highly publicised founder launch or personal brand behind it. In fact, Anch did the opposite.
She stayed anonymous.
Early customers were buying KASSANOVA without knowing who had created it, something that made those first orders particularly meaningful.
“They’d found it on their own and seen something in it that felt right for them,” she says.
Changing the conversation around intimate care
The idea behind KASSANOVA also reaches further back into Anch’s life.
Growing up, conversations about periods were uncomfortable within her family. She remembers buying sanitary pads and watching as a shopkeeper wrapped them in newspaper before handing them over.
It was an everyday purchase, yet the experience made it feel like something that needed to be hidden.
Years later, Anch recognised a similar feeling when shopping for intimate-care products.
At the same time, she could happily spend time choosing a body cream because of its scent, texture or the simple enjoyment of using it.
She began wondering why the two experiences needed to feel so different.
KASSANOVA was created around the idea that external intimate care could sit naturally alongside skincare and body care — something a woman could choose because she enjoyed the ritual, not something that needed to feel awkward or purely clinical.
The brand began with intimate washes, polishes and creams, with Anch bringing the same attention to texture, scent and packaging that consumers expect elsewhere in their beauty routines.
Now she is taking the idea further.
Enter KASSANOVA 2.0
Launching on 16 November, KASSANOVA 2.0 marks the brand’s first expansion into facial skincare.
The new collection introduces The Morning Muse eye patches, The Glow Affair facial hydrogel masks, The Velvet Pause external intimate mask and Silk to Go intimate wipes.
For Anch, facial skincare and intimate care do not need to exist in separate worlds.
One of her favourite examples is The Mask Ritual, which brings eye patches, facial hydrogel masks and an external intimate mask together.
“You might reach for the eye patches with your morning coffee and save the intimate mask for a quiet evening,” she explains. “I love that both can feel equally at home in your beauty routine.”
Every KASSANOVA product is vegan and cruelty-free, while Anch says her science background continues to influence the practical side of product development.
She asks suppliers what individual ingredients contribute to a formula, but she also thinks about what happens after the product reaches someone’s bathroom or dressing table.
Will she know how to use it? Will she enjoy it? Most importantly, will she want to reach for it again?
A founder finally steps in front of the camera
There is another reason the November launch feels particularly significant.
For the first time, Anch herself appears in a KASSANOVA campaign.
Shot by photographer Rachael White, the KASSANOVA 2.0 campaign takes inspiration from a playful ’90s beauty editorial, with satin, soft lighting, sleep masks and hydrogel patches giving everyday beauty rituals a more glamorous treatment.
For someone who describes herself as naturally private, appearing in front of the camera was a meaningful step.
Anch had watched other founders document almost every part of building their businesses, from opening samples to sharing their daily lives online. She understood the connection that approach could create, but knew it was not right for her.
Instead, she allowed customers to meet KASSANOVA before meeting its founder.
Now she is ready to become part of its visual story.
“I wanted a photograph I could look back on years from now and remember this chapter, when I was still teaching, packing orders and figuring things out as I went,” she says.
“It feels good to share that part of the story on my own terms.”
From $800 in Australia to building a beauty brand
That chapter looks very different from Anch’s first years in Australia.
She arrived with $800, worked multiple jobs to pay her international student fees and spent months completing unpaid teaching placements.
Later, putting the savings she had worked so hard to accumulate into a business was understandably daunting.
“What if it doesn’t work out?” was a question she repeatedly asked herself.
Rather than making one enormous leap, Anch broke the process into smaller decisions.
She kept teaching. She spoke to suppliers. She worked through samples. She built the website.
“Every time I figured something out for myself, I trusted myself a little more with the next decision.”
Just days after KASSANOVA launched, Anch learned the brand had been invited to join BIG W Marketplace.
She was having dinner with her partner when she saw the news and jumped from her seat to tell him. He initially thought she was joking.
For a founder who had barely told people in her own circle that she had started a business, the idea that shoppers elsewhere in Australia could discover something she had created felt surreal.
Today, KASSANOVA products can also be found through local skin and laser clinics, Woolworths Everyday Market and MedCart.
Yet Anch says customer feedback still creates some of her most rewarding moments.
Ambition with room for a softer life
There is a recurring idea throughout Anch’s story: ambition does not have to mean postponing enjoyment until everything else is finished.
“I believe you can be ambitious and still make room for a softer life,” she says.
It is a lesson shaped partly by her twenties, when work, study and financial responsibilities often came first.
She spent years assuming there would eventually be a point when things settled down and she would have more time to enjoy life.
Now she is trying to enjoy it while she is still building it.
Sometimes that is as simple as finishing the day’s orders, putting on a face mask and sitting down for twenty minutes.
That philosophy has also become part of KASSANOVA.
Rather than presenting self-care as another obligation to fit into an already crowded routine, Anch wants the brand to represent small moments someone genuinely looks forward to.
Even the packaging matters. She wants opening a KASSANOVA order to feel a little like unwrapping a gift chosen for yourself — even on an ordinary Tuesday.
What comes next?
Over the next 12 months, Anch hopes to see KASSANOVA stocked on more shelves across Australia.
She particularly likes the experience of someone encountering the products in person, picking up a box and having a conversation about something they may not have seen before.
She also wants to see how customers respond to KASSANOVA 2.0 before deciding exactly where the facial skincare and intimate-care collections go next.
The long-term ambition is significant: Anch would love KASSANOVA to become a name recognised by women across Australia.
But her definition of success remains grounded in smaller moments too.
A customer loving a product enough to recommend it to a friend. Dinner with people she loves. A slow morning when life allows one. And remembering to enjoy an achievement when it happens rather than immediately moving on to the next goal.
Her advice to anyone considering creating something of their own follows much the same philosophy.
Start with something you genuinely wish existed. Then take one step towards finding out whether the idea could become something more.
Talk to someone who might use it. Ask a supplier the question you think you should already know. Get a sample into your hands.
And, perhaps most importantly, allow yourself enough time to discover what you are capable of.
Anch has developed her own version of the advice that has helped her through the uncertainty of building KASSANOVA:
“Keep going long enough to surprise yourself.”
For a founder who began quietly, that seems particularly fitting.
KASSANOVA 2.0 launches on 16 November 2026.
Discover KASSANOVA: kassanovaintimatecare.com
Instagram: @kassanovaau
Photography: Rach White Photography.
