$200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

Yeah, like deodorant, diamonds, Armani, the Model T, cruise ships, tanning salons, makeup, corsets, diet pills, jumbo mortgages, health spas, and The Great Vowel Shift of the 1600s.<p>Nearly everything is marketed by making you seem like a person of higher social status. If people were comfortable with who they were, we wouldn't need 90% of the goods on the market (and the remaining 10% would likely be much cheaper). It's not human nature to be content with your lot in life; if we made everyone equal, they'd find some new dimension to elevate. Bring on the Star-Bellied Sneetches!

There is nothing more wrong about this product than tanning creams. The users of this product aren't aspiring to be white people (which seems to be implied). It's used for aesthetic reasons.

This market is not really new... It seems a lot of E/SE Asians got cosmetic eye lid surgery to look more Western <p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/1101020805/story2.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/1101020805/story2.html</a><p>To understand it better all you have to do is walk around in a big Japanese city and look at the print ads (or hell just watch some of the commercials)... it still perplexes me to this day

I would not be willing to spend years getting inside the heads of customers whose mindset I oppose. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?

Prejudice is just Bayesian reasoning. What's wrong with it?

This is hilarious. Here is a product that makes skin color literally skin deep -- and you're complaining that it appeals to prejudice?

I'm sorry to say, but it really seems like many people here are talking right out of their ass.<p>For people who actually lived in India for an extended period of time: <p>1. what is the driving force behind this market? is it purely aesthetics, like tanning creams, or does race play into it?<p>2. how large is the phenomenon? is it something common that many people think about or just a fringe market? <p>3. how is it viewed by the locals? are people who do this kind of thing ashamed to admit it?

If you can be a pornstar and make some money, would you still execute?<p>If you can be a doctor that does abortion, would you still execute? (Conversely, if you're a doctor that doesn't do abortions, would you still execute?)<p>If you can own a tanning salon and make some money, would you still execute?<p>If you can make songs about selling drugs, pimping ho's, robbing people and make money, would you still execute?<p>Everyone has their morality line drawn somewhere.

"catering to prejudice" brings to mind setting up sites for the KKK or something. This is more like girls wanting to look like Britney, or kids dancing like Michael Jackson, or yuppies competing for the best BMW, or strippers getting boob-jobs. It's a social-fashion issue. Yes, perhaps there is prejudice involved, but it sounds more like garden-variety fashion and competition based on looks than deep-seated racism.<p> The better question to me is where do you draw the line. What's a business model that you wouldn't execute? I draw the line at companies who do not treat people in a way that they themselves would want to be treated and that causes direct bodily harm. For example, if you've got a web site selling drugs to kids over the internet, that's obviously not something you would want sold to your kid.