Students’ AI-generated perfume concept impresses French beauty giant L'Oreal
Wednesday, 22 July 2026
Third-year University of Auckland students Mihir Ojas Rallapudi, Nathaniel Brown and Maadhav Arora were flown to Paris after being recognised for their innovation linking memory to smell and perfumes.
Global beauty giant L’Oreal flew the engineering students for an all-expenses paid trip to the French capital in June to compete in the final round of its L’Oreal Brandstorm competition.
This was the first time participants from New Zealand made it to the final stages of the competition, and the top 10 globally.
Their AI-generated perfume idea links memory to smell and perfumes.
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Rallapudi and Brown told The Post the prompt of the competition was to craft the future of luxury fragrance.
The concept they submitted was called Memoir, whereby you upload an image of a memory that you want to relive and AI analyses it, giving suggestions of what notes to put together to make a fragrance.
“You can also interact with the AI and add onto the image extra things you remember from the moment. The AI analyses the image where it thinks it was from, the time, date, and it curates a brief to send to a perfumer so that when you get a perfume back, it invokes nostalgia,” Rallapudi said.
Initially, the trio entered the competition after stumbling across an advert, while searching for an internship for the 800 hours of practical experience required to complete their degrees.
They are now going down the track of patenting their innovation, and considering future careers in business and the beauty industry.
Rallapudi and Brown are yet to make any memories into a fragrance, but it was technology that the likes of L'Oreal could use to create future products, they said.
“We initially had to submit a three-slide pitch, which was talking about our idea and our solution to that prompt, and then we had to submit a three-minute video describing our team work,” Brown said.
L’Oreal Brandstorm received about 2000 entries from New Zealand and Australia, and chose the top five teams; four from Australia, and one from New Zealand, and flew them to Melbourne for the national finals, which the trio ended up winning.
From there they were invited to the international round representing Australia and New Zealand, in Paris.
They were up against 45 teams from around the world in the semifinals, where they pitched their idea, and advanced to the finals alongside six teams from countries including China, the US and Vietnam.
The trio also presented at Viva Tech, Europe's largest annual tech conference.
While they did not win the finals, the trio said the experience was invaluable and had given them exposure to a whole other industry.
“It was the first time in the 34 years that a New Zealand team had made it to the international finals. It was also the first time a New Zealand team had won the Australia New Zealand nationals because historically it's been a Australian team that's always won and represented the region in Paris.”
Their first-hand experience on how STEM intersects with the beauty industry was invaluable.
“Because we're engineering students, we've never done a marketing-consumer products competition. The main takeaway from it was exposure to how kind of this market works,” Rallapudi said.
It was an honour to represent New Zealand on the international stage.
“I'm kind of still in shock that it all happened. I'm super grateful. It has made me feel like I want to start a venture of my own in the future.”
The undergraduate engineering students are in their third years through four and five-year degrees, and have been asked by L’Oreal if they are interested in interning or doing a graduate programme in Melbourne or Auckland.
“Because the internships are six months-long, we can do them alongside uni. But I want to wait until after our part four project is done so that way I can use my fifth year to potentially intern at L'Oreal,” Brown said.
L’Oreal NZ Country Lead Daina Wilson said L’Oreal’s Brandstorm competition was about finding new talent to bring into the business, and the local business was keen to have the finalist students do a summer internship.
“What we want to do is bring in young professionals and students to share their creativity, those who challenge the frontiers of technology with really great ideas, and we're using that as pipeline of talent for our business, looking to bring great interns and management trainees into our business” Wilson said.
“For the New Zealand team this year, that’s the first time across both Australia and New Zealand that we've ever had a team reach the finals in Paris, and to be one of the six teams, they beat 380,000 teams to get there.”
Brandstorm was about creative thinking and helping young people to build their careers, but L’Oreal also had another programme, Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation, which offered start-ups the opportunity to partner on tech and innovation projects, Wilson said.
It was designed for organisations that were at a stage where they were wanting to pilot their business, with the beauty giant providing financial backing and support to bring the idea to life, she said.
This year 10 New Zealand applications had been received and L’Oreal would make its selection across August and September.
“It's a win-win for L'Oreal and also for these teams. It allows us to have innovation in terms of beauty technology, how we're engaging with consumers, and how we're bringing a good consumer experience to the market.
“For the startups, it's giving financial backing. It also gives them a one-year support with our executives, who help them shape their business, and then we scale it around the world, and it gets tested live in markets to help them get off the ground.”