The general manager of beauty for TikTok has been busy building what he called "discovery commerce" for the social giant. Ajay Salpekar is an engineer by training, so it’s no surprise he’s adeptly built one of beauty’s biggest e-commerce platforms.

“I’m trained in building systems,” Salpekar said. “At Microsoft and then Amazon, that’s what I practiced.”

Although he made the jump to the commercial side during his time at Amazon, before moving on to the conglomerate side with Unilever, those early learnings as an engineer have defined how he spends his time now as general manager of beauty for TikTok, from creating viral moments to what he does when he’s not working. “My three kids are the centre of my world,” he said. “There are a lot of Legos.”