The luxury skincare and beauty market is robust, growing at about 6 percent a year and worth $445 billion by 2020, according to the India iteration of Euromonitor International, a global market survey company.

But within this larger pie is an alternate beauty market, pegged at $20 billion, one that caters to the growing demand for everything natural. Adventurous entrepreneurs such as Vishal Bhandari and Kavita Khosa have tapped into the void that exists in India to create brands that can become the next Kama Ayurveda or Forest Essentials.

Ecommerce Game Plan

“Retail and e-commerce form the bedrock of the business,” says Bhandari, the founder of SoulTree. “But it is more ecommerce than retail, because then you keep the costs low and reach a bigger customer base.”

The biggest roadblock for these companies is the unavailability of quality raw material such as flowers and herbs. So many prefer to collaborate with small farmers to grow their own.

Brands like Ma Earth Botanicals have been approached by private equity players, especially after Estee Lauder picked up a 20 percent stake in Forest Essentials in 2008, but they prefer to stay as family-owned businesses.

Here are four skincare and beauty brands that are likely to make a splash in the coming years.

SoulTree: Vishal Bhandari, a former Merchant Navy officer, gave up his cushy job to trek through villages in Uttarakhand in search of farmers experimenting with organic farming and help them connect with the global marketplace.

He said he wanted to build a range of beauty products from the herbs the farmers were growing. “I searched for manufacturers who do not use any chemicals, but hit a dead end.”

So he set up a small lab in a refurbished shed, hired a 25-year-old amateur chemist who was willing to experiment, and roped in a retired 75-year-old practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine as advisor. SoulTree’s offerings include lipsticks and kohl, moisturizers, and a haircare range.

SOVA: Vasvadatta Gandhi hails from the family that runs Millennium Herbal Care, a company that provides raw material to the natural wellness industry. She fell back on her father, HI Gandhi’s considerable experience to launch SOVA, a brand with a foundation in Ayurveda.

Partnered by beauty professional Sneha Daftary, SOVA’s products are manufactured in a factory in Maharashtra. “We target a younger generation that is open to experimenting with organic beauty products from young brands like ours,” says Vasvadatta. “Our products are made with unusual ingredients like a Jatamansi root and Indian rose shampoo or a walnut and violet flower serum.”

Pureearth: The foundation for this brand was laid in Hong Kong, where its owner-founder Kavita Khosa lives. But it is manufactured at a lab in Pune with most of the ingredients are sourced from microcredit women’s self-help groups based in the Himalayas. While the brand is almost four years old, in 2018 it collaborated with Anthropologie, an American retail major and Birchbox, a New York City-based online monthly luxury subscription service that sends its subscribers a box of four to five selected samples of make-up and beauty products. Among its products is a wild rose and seabuck face cream, a blend of sea buckthorn berry and wild rosehip.

Ma Earth Botanicals: Founded by the mother-daughter duo Swarn and Anaisha Sukh, Ma Earth Botanicals began as an idea almost four decades ago but was finally set up in 2013. For marketing, the company gets bloggers and social media influencers to test its products and write about them in a bid to reach out to a larger customer base. Its range of skin and haircare are available at some of the toniest lifestyle stores like En Inde (Delhi), Sacha’s Shop (Goa), Teatro Dhora (Jaipur) and Living Free (Kolkata).

Deepali Nandwani is a journalist who who keeps a close watch on the world of luxury.

First Published:Apr 9, 2018 6:11 PM IST