Meet Sunny Leone, the badass entreprenuer

The world knows Sunny Leone as a former adult entertainer, a recent Bollywood import and the recipient of the ‘most searched star on the internet in India’ for four years in a row, but that’s not how the 35-year-old wants to be remembered.

Having launched her recent perfume line ‘Lust,’ in Dubai barely a week back, the actress is keen to establish herself as an entrepreneur, as well.

Her aim is to create a brand by tapping into various categories.

At the moment, Leone’s recent line of investments includes a franchise for a box league cricket, web-based short stories, and an online game apart from fragrances. She is also keen to enter categories such as shoes, accessories, jewellery and apparels with her own line of products.
Apart from focusing on Bollywood, the actress who was always interested in business from a young age is keen to expand her brand profile in India.

In fact, the star remembers how as a child she would put up lemonade stands during summers and shovelled snow in the winters to earn money.

Her official foray into the big bad world of business started with her understanding of adult content as a business industry. But, she wanted more. “I wanted to own a website and run my company and build my brand” she said in an interview and what followed was her handling everything.

In order to manage her website, she learnt HTML, video-editing, photography among others and in the process of doing everything from start to finish, Leone also learnt the harsh reality of website traffic.

“In a digital world, traffic is the best thing you can have. So I learnt where to send this traffic and how to capitalise all of it,” she added.

Over the years, that also included her move to India from Canada, Leone has started believing in slow and steady businesses. By her own admission, she doesn’t believe in fast-paced businesses.

It was only after she decided to participate in Big Boss did she realise the enormity of the reach her brand had in the Indian market, which ultimately led to her deciding to move to the country with her husband.

Her goal right now is to start producing movies, but before she does that Business Insider decided to take a look at Sunny Leone’s various businesses-


1. Lust perfume line

Inspired by the Kardashian model, Leone’s perfume line is aimed at the mass market. For the same reason, the price has been kept highly competitive to attract the consuming class.

While the Lust Deo is priced at Rs 249, the Eau De Toilet comes at Rs 999.

The perfume line has been designed by the actress herself, and includes, women perfumes and men and women deos.

The distribution of the products has already begun, both in the online and offline categories.


2. Box-league cricket team Chennai Swaggers

In February, the actress also unveiled her celebrity box league cricket team Chennai Swaggers, as part of a reality show cricket tournament backed by Balaji’s Ekta Kapoor and featuring well known television stars as players.

Justifying her decision of buying a cricket team, Leone said that though she loved several games, she fell in love with cricket after coming to India.

Chennai Swaggers features a handful of known names from the Television industry that includes Shabbir Ahluwalia, Mouni Roy, Sangram Singh and Ritwick Dhanjani among others.


3. Sweet Dreams

This year also saw Leone taking to the pen and churning out original mobile-first collection of erotic short stories under the title Sweet Dreamsin association with Chiki Sarkar’s publishing house, Juggernaut.

Released in April this year, one had to sign in one the Juggernaut app on their mobile phones to buy Sweet Dreams. After purchasing the title, all one had to do is sit back, as one short story would be delivered to their phone daily at 10 pm.

Reportedly, Leone finished writing the 12 erotic short stories in a span of three months.


4. Teen Patti with Sunny Leone

Sunny Leone also has an online game called Teen Patti to her credit, which was launched in December, last year, in partnership with Gamiana, a game development company.

The game combines two of India's popular hobbies -- Teen Patti and Bollywood. The game allows the players to play different variation of Teen Patti, create private tables for their own unique play sessions gatherings, as well as chat and trade unique gifts with other players. Players can also earn Sunny Leone digital collectibles as they level up.