YUV, a beauty-technology company founded by industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Francisco Gimenez, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Nineyards Equity. The company is aiming to modernize one of the beauty sector’s largest and least digitized categories: professional hair coloring.
Francisco Gimenez is a Mexico City–born industrial engineer and entrepreneur who earned his BSc and MSc from Universidad Anáhuac and an MBA from UCLA before building a career at the intersection of beauty and technology. He first co-founded eSalon, a pioneering direct-to-consumer custom hair-color company later acquired by Henkel, giving him deep operational and supply-chain experience in the global hair-color market. Drawing on this background, he founded YUV to modernize professional salon hair coloring through a technology-driven platform that integrates hardware, software, and cartridge-based chemistry to reduce waste, improve efficiency, and transform a largely analog category.
The company is introducing a technology-driven, closed-loop platform that integrates hardware, software, and patented color chemistry. This system is designed to improve working capital efficiency for salons, reduce waste, and expand creative flexibility for stylists who have historically relied on analog and tube-based products.
YUV is targeting the $55 billion global professional hair color market, a segment characterized by steady demand and long-standing profitability but limited innovation. The company’s model includes direct distribution, recurring revenue from consumable cartridges, and a global supply chain framework that aims to deliver unit economics nearly three times stronger than those of incumbent solutions.
Backers point to founder Francisco Gimenez’s extensive entrepreneurial background in supply chain and product execution as a key advantage supporting YUV’s potential for category leadership. The company plans to expand further across the United Kingdom and accelerate its entry into the United States beginning in 2026.
