The new consumer values Indian-made products anchored in tradition. It was the subject of discussion at the conference organised by a TV news channel. In one of the panel discussions at the event, the success of what the host termed as “India Proud” brands were attributed to them being “rooted in tradition” and “global in outlook and modern in outreach”. One of the panellists was Arush Chopra, the founder of Just Herbs, a Chandigarh-based beauty company.
The company’s tagline describes the brand succinctly in three words: Pure, bespoke, Ayurvedic. Arush Chopra talked about the importance of consumer engagement and using modern methods to reach and interact with prospective buyers. His bestselling product, a make-up foundation, he said, was entirely developed by consumer feedback on the company’s Facebook page.
The potential of Ayurveda beauty products in India prompted Chopra, an investment banker, to quit his job in Singapore and join the small business started by his mother Neena Chopra. A trained biochemist, Neena was also a banker before she left her job to make creams and lotions from home in 2002. Rebranded as Just Herbs when Chopra came on board in 2012, they now have a wide range of Ayurveda-inspired hair and skin products manufactured in a factory in Mohali near Chandigarh.
Chopra calls his company a digitally-driven beauty brand. The company sold its products only online until recently. “We consciously chose the online route. We want to reach out to the young urban woman of today, who cares about what goes into her products,” says Chopra. Just Herbs now has stores in Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Hyderabad, but the online business continues to be an important contributor to sales. “We get more than 1.5 lakh visitors on the website per month and around 4 per cent end up buying.” Just Herbs ships 3,000-4,000 orders a day through its own website and third-party e-commerce sites.
It is not an easy sale. The landscape is getting increasingly competitive. At one end, there is Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali with its inexpensive mass-market items and at the other, highly-priced “luxurious” ones like Forest Essentials and Kama Ayurveda, finding patronage of the rich and upcoming class in metros and small cities. Several others stand at various points within this wide range, in terms of both price and brand. Just Herbs’ “deliberate positioning”, as Chopra calls it, offers better quality at a lower price than the top-end brands. Standing for simplicity and purity, Just Herbs describes itself as “luxurious and safe natural skincare” on its website.
Just Herbs marketing has been effective, but I feel compelled to ask Chopra if he has been sincere with the use of the word “luxurious” for face masks and scrubs, which we could concoct at home about a generation ago. “Getting something unadulterated and pure is a luxury in today’s time,” Chopra responds immediately. “What about the exorbitant prices of some of these products?” I persist. “The fancy packaging and the expensive retail locations do play their role,” Chopra concedes. “But eventually, customers judge the value of the product based on its efficacy and safety.”
The argument seems earnest enough given that creating a genuine product was one of the reasons that Chopra gives for trading his stable career for a risky business venture. “Like the financial services industry, the beauty industry is very susceptible to mis-selling. You’re sold things which you don’t understand, don’t need and aren’t good for you. We want to change this. We want to be totally honest and transparent,” answers Chopra. Indeed, Just Herbs discloses the full list of ingredients on the packaging.
In an industry where the terms “herbal” and “Ayurveda” are used quite loosely, this transparency has helped differentiate it from competitors to garner customer loyalty. The Ayurveda manufacturing licenses issued by AYUSH allow companies to make those products that are mentioned in the Ayurveda texts; they can also make their own proprietary formulations based on the classical ones. For example, Bhringraj oil is an Ayurveda formulation which treats many hair and scalp conditions.
A company with Ayurveda manufacturing licence can have their own version of it. So an Ayurveda cosmetics manufacturer needs to only prove the presence of the herbs from the classical treatment for a condition. The percentage of the herb or mineral in a product is not stipulated by law.
Commercial Ayurveda products, therefore, need not be wholly organic or even chemical-free. Arush Chopra, however, decided that their brand will stand for safety and honesty. “Safety, for us, means that we don’t use parabens or sulphates, the chemicals which have been linked to deadly diseases and are being used by almost all commercial cosmetic manufacturers. We also don’t use artificial fragrances. So, is our product 100 per cent natural? Well, some products like ubtans don’t need preservatives and are 100 per cent natural, but those that do, have approximately 1 to 2 per cent preservatives. These preservatives aren’t parabens or other harmful chemicals; they’re the safe ones, which are used in organic cosmetics the world over. We try to remain as close to nature as possible. Hence, in our products, instead of the sun protection factor (SPF) we’ve used zinc oxide, which is a naturally occurring substance and is an effective block for both ultraviolet rays A and B.”
Health and wellness are megatrends the world over today, and both manufacturers and consumers are adopting non-chemical formulations for personal care products. Moreover, in India, the cultural familiarity with Ayurveda as a nature-inspired system of medicine has led to widespread acceptance of herbal cosmetics.
The Ayurvedic medical system focuses as much on preventive health, beauty and hygiene care as on the treatment of diseases. Beauty businesses inclined towards natural products do not have to search hard to find herbal formulations for cosmetics. Sophisticated beauty routines and descriptions of various cosmetic usages by both men and women are found in several books from ancient India. Many of these regimens are subtly interwoven with the seasons.
The following are excerpts from Kaninika Mishra’s ‘The Indic Quotient’ (Bloomsbury India). Her bestselling book ‘The Indian Millionaire Next Door’, published in 2012, contains inspiring accounts of the professional journeys of India’s top financial advisors and has been translated into Hindi and Tamil.