Pragati Vijay(Journey)

Pragati Vijay was born and brought up in the sleeping, small city of Allahabad, now known as PrayagRaj. Since her very in early years, she had exposure to make up & beauty business since her mother owned a small beauty salon, relevant in Tier II cities of India in the 80s.

Initially, she wasn’t inclined towards making her own professional debut in the beauty industry, and just like any other person she enrolled into graduation course at a local college. However, for the sake of assisting her mother in managing the beauty salon she tried to get involved and learn various beauty services provided at the salon.

Soon her interest increased and she started earning the needed details and mastery on her own .

Fortunately In her 1st year of graduation, she enrolled into 1 year hair dressing course at Jawed Habib, New Delhi in 2004.

What started as a desire to learn so as to be able to manage her mother’s beauty salon and the staff employed in it, along with the fun & adventure that comes with the big city life got blown into a full-fledged career interest in the beauty field.

As her interest grew, so did the hunger to learn more and add more skill. She then travelled to Mumbai in 2005 for a 2 month course in Make-up by Mr.Kishore Thakkar.

Having had first hand experience of large scale beauty and makeup business in New Delhi, she wanted to replicate the same in her hometown upon returning. Which she did by taking up franchisee of Shehnaz Hussain by the end of 2005, for which she took Woman’s World Wide Diploma Course.

At an age of 21, when most of the youth is still figuring out what to do with their lives, Pragati already had her own salon which is now into its 18 years of operations and is still running successfully.

But she wasn’t the one to settle for what she had already achieved. Driven by constant desire for being better, she learned air brush makeup from international make-up artist Mr.Jos Brands in 2009.

By the time she was proficient in this, she was arguably the 1st Air Brush makeup expert in Uttar Pradesh. She has done a certificateion in international makeup and is a certified International Makeup Artist.

In rewards to her dedication, she is currently running her own bridal make up studio by the name of Pragati’s Makeup Mantra and has multiple beauty and makeup outlets in the city.

Sooner or later, every hard work gets recognized and so it happened for her. To her list of achievments and awards are the following :

• ⪼ Best Makeup artist in Uttar Pradesh by Mrs.Madhuri Dixit Nene
• ⪼ Best Bridal Makeup artist in India by Ms Karishma Kapoor at Dubai
• ⪼ Indian Bridal Makeup artist of the year by Ms Shilpa Shetty Kundra.

In her own words, the key to success is love & passion for your own work, a humble & gentle approach towards staff and clients alike & use of only authentic & branded products.

She plans to start her own franchisee models in near future and expand into other cities nationally and internationally. Given her journey so far, it is a question of ‘when it happens’, not ‘if it happens’.

She dedicates her recognition and achievements accumulated so far, to her family, as without their support, it wouldn’t have been possible for her.

Pragati’s successful career journey is the belief in the epitome that if you truly want to make it big in you life then no hurdle, excuse or reason can stand in the way of your hard-work, dedication and desire.