How a breast cancer survivor built a successful clean beauty platform – the ‘Goop of the Middle East’ – on the back of beating the disease
- Anisha Oberoi was diagnosed with breast cancer in her late 20s, overcoming the disease with treatment and the support of her mum and friends
- Her cancer journey left her with knowledge of an untapped niche – clean beauty – giving birth to the idea for the online platform Secret Skin
It was August 2010 and Anisha Oberoi, in her late 20s, had the world at her feet. She had kicked off a career in luxury fashion working for Zegna and had just been offered a place to study an MBA at the prestigious business school INSEAD in France.
A couple of months later, when she was preparing her move from her home in Delhi in India to Paris in France, the lump turned hard and started throbbing. She went to see a third doctor who ordered a biopsy.
She was floored by the results.
“I remember reading the report and the ground slipping away beneath my feet. When you are in your 20s you think you are invincible. I didn’t know anyone with cancer, I was so far removed from it,” she recalls over Zoom from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where she now lives.
“I remember thinking, ‘But I am supposed to be flying to Paris in two weeks, I can’t have cancer.’”
