Candace Harris, founder of MYAVANA, is revolutionizing the beauty industry with her AI-powered hair analysis tool. As a result of her journey to understand her natural hair, Harris, a computer science major from Georgia Tech, has created a platform that empowers women to embrace their unique hair types and find the best products for their hair care needs.
Why did you get into the beauty business?
It started when I was in college, going natural and just rediscovering my hair again because I wore a relaxer since I was a young girl. Relearning my hair took me on a path of trying to figure out what products are best to use because I was using different creams and gels, but my hair was drying out and breaking off. I was majoring in computer science at Georgia Tech at the time. I got an email one day about an inventor’s competition, called the InVenture Prize. It was about how to turn your idea into an invention and start a business. That was my first step in understanding how to identify a problem, create a solution for it and then build a business around it.
How does MYAVANA work?
MYAVANA is an AI tool that can analyze your hair and tell you which products are best for you to use. We do it through AI. You can take a photo and we can analyze all the unique compositions of texture, type and condition of your hair. Your hair is as unique as your fingerprint. You’re typically more than just one hair type. MYAVANA tells you the percentage breakdown of your unique hair composition and the products that are going to work best.
How did you gain celebrity partners?
We’ve been very blessed to attract amazing people to MYAVANA. We started with our first celebrity brand ambassadors in 2019. I ran into Letoya Luckett at the Essence Festival. We have been partnering with Essence to bring our beauty tech activation to the Essence Festival over the past five years. That led to us working with Keri Hilson and Indigo Bridges because they were doing a campaign called “If Not For My Girls” at the time. MYAVANA is about sisterhood. We call ourselves hair care girlfriends, taking care of each other by giving you the inside scoop on how to take care of your hair. Those relationships are just organically formed. Then we met Viola Davis during Oscars weekend and we met Queen Latifah through our brand ambassador Johnny Wright, who is her hairstylist.
Why is this type of technology needed for underrepresented groups, such as women of color?
I think it comes back to acceptance, authenticity and being your authentic self. That is core to the brand. We just want people to feel like they don’t have to wear a wig to look good, or they don’t have to have their hair a certain way to be more attractive or to be more accepted.
