By Vrinda Rastogi
11-Aug-2023
A global Indian beauty brand transforming the beauty market with its cutting-edge technologies - Love, Indus is a breath of fresh air on the aisles of sustainable beauty. Precious ingredients like Biotransformed Makaibari Silver Tips Imperial Tea, Liquified Golden Muga silk, and Thanaka Wood are combined with clean-lab-designed synthetics such as hyaluronic acid and vegan collagen to create high-performance formulas.
Borne of passion from Kolkata-born Surbhee Grover, the brand was established in 2021 as the NYC-based founder and entrepreneur realized the need for bridging the gap between what we know and see is green beauty. In conversation with Globalspa, Surbhee unfurls more on the brand’s philosophy, future visions, and words of aspiration:
1. Starting off, please tell us a bit about the inception of Love Indus. How did it come about?
With an undergraduate degree in Economics from St. Stephens College and a master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, I started my career in personal care working on new product launches for Parachute - India’s largest hair care brand (a coconut oil treatment). I subsequently joined L’Oréal as a brand manager and part of the core team that launched the brand in India. From pure, virgin coconut oil treatments to hair color, from selling to consumers in rural Bengal to collaborating with professional luxury spas and salons – these early years taught me a lot about how consumers engage with beauty, skincare and personal products and what truly matters to them.
The next stage of my life brought me to New York (which is now home) and after a master’s from NYU Stern, I joined Booz & Co, a global consulting firm where I worked on strategy and innovation for clients in the consumer space. With my base in New York – a city that heralds many trends – I was able to observe how consumer consciousness led to the now-ubiquitous clean beauty category, and how several Indian concepts, such as yoga, or Indian kitchen staples such as turmeric and coconut oil started finding their way into the daily life and lattes of Western consumers. There was no “aha!” moment that led to the birth of Love, Indus. It was more a gradual realization that the skincare and wellness concepts from the Indian subcontinent that had achieved some recognition globally, barely scratched the surface of all the regional riches that I had grown up experiencing. In addition, my strategy consulting work and global career taught me that technology and innovation, used effectively, can significantly enhance and compliment natural elements.
2. What is the ultimate vision that you carry for your brand?
Build the first innovation-led, luxury South Asian beauty and wellness brand with a global footprint. And to help reshape Indian beauty beyond Ayurveda. Think of us as Indian Beauty 2.0 – while the first wave of South Asian beauty brands ushered in the benefits of Ayurveda, tradition and natural ingredients incl kitchen staples like turmeric, saffron, coconut oil – we leverage innovation to bring never-before seen solutions to global skincare and wellness.
Love, Indus aims to be at the forefront of Indian-inspired beauty 2.0 – that goes beyond the well-known staples from South Asia and harnesses ancient, powerful botanicals & minerals – some lost, some forgotten, and some that are yet to be discovered and harnessed outside their regional bastions. We create potent products by leveraging lab-designed clean chemistry and the latest in skincare tech and innovations. Rare regional riches from the Indian subcontinent + NYC’s transformative tech = Potent Potions.
What sets Love, Indus apart is its commitment to innovation. The brand's mission is to provide powerful products and sensorial skincare that delivers solutions to unmet consumer needs. Clinically led and consciously formulated, all Love, Indus products are gender-neutral and extremely clean (free from parabens, phthalates, sulfates, formaldehyde and artificial fragrances and colors).
3. What are some of the bestsellers of Love, Indus you'd recommend to beauty enthusiasts?
Our launch collection was curated with two objectives in mind – (a) Fulfill essential needs with incredibly potent formulations that are safe even for the most sensitive skin (b) Fulfill unmet needs, where consumers have few efficacious, non-intrusive options. Both our Amrutini® Luminosity Dewdrops and the Freedom of Expression Line Limiter are exceptional, yet unique products that are creating new skincare categories
I’ll focus on the Freedom of Expression Line Limiter for now! Our Line Limiter formulation comes with a metal applicator (and smells heavenly, btw!) and is a powerful treatment for these lip lines, laugh lines, forehead creases…and any expression lines that form as we age. We're especially proud of this product not just because it's a first of its kind targeting expression lines and creases around the lips and the rest of your face. We had our formulation team dig deep to identify ingredients that would really make a difference. As the name suggests, it works in 2 ways - one it helps blur lines and second it reduces them over time, with regular use. It is packed with 40+ ingredients/actives and is an extremely complex and high-performing formula. Some of the key ingredients include natural extracts of Kokum, Hibiscus, Senna, and Vegan collagen. These and other critical ingredients work together to deliver an immediate softening of these lines on application and help reduce creases over time. It is an innovative offering, and this product has carved a very loyal following.
4. Love, Indus is highly focused on conscious and sustainable beauty. Please share with us why this notion is important for you.
The idea of sustainability, consciously sourced inputs (ingredients, packaging etc.) and protection of the environment is central to our ethos. To us, “sustainable” is broader than just the ingredients and packaging. It also means that the rights and wellbeing of all participants (artisans and workers) are protected along the length of the value chain and the business operates in a way that helps create better outcomes for the ecosystem that we operate in. For example, we don’t use conflict minerals, or any ingredients made with child labor or environmentally destructive practices in any of our products. And we don’t test on animals (ever).
We’ve worked with about 40 ingredient suppliers ranging from global behemoths to small independent suppliers and did our diligence to work only with reputable suppliers committed to responsible sourcing. The products were purposefully created, the brand is conscious about the environment, and this is reflected in several decisions – such as:
• Use of glass and sustainable packaging wherever possible
• We opted to not do single-use / samples and opted for reusable, mini glass sample jars instead
• We use FSC paper for our packaging cartons
Our products are extremely clean i.e. they use natural and synthetic ingredients that are known to be safe and non-toxic. Hence, our products are free from artificial fragrance, artificial color, parabens, phthalates, sulfates & formaldehyde. They have been sourced consciously and are developed using stringent clean beauty standards. In addition, we’ve vetted all ingredients against EWG’s Skin Deep database and we’ve also conducted extensive testing, including Human Repeat Insult Patch Test (HRIPT) with human volunteers to ensure our products work even on the most sensitive skin.
We believe a business must make things better – not just for itself, but also for its employees, partners, consumers, and the environment.
5. What are the expansion plans for the brand in the near future? Any retail openings in the works?
While online expansion and D2C is always going to be important, we’ve seen that our brand does especially well in the right retail surroundings. Given that the brand was created to be a sensorial experience – every aspect – from the fragrance (that is made up of 18 essential oils), to the packaging (which is incredibly different and beautiful and incorporates art and culture in a unique triangular shape), the textures (deeply rich and luscious but still fast-absorbing) and the product performance (visible results one can start to discern pretty much from first application)….all these facts make our brand and products a fit for stores and other selective physical environments.
We have a few exciting developments for retail and store partnerships in the second half of the year that we will be revealing in the coming weeks.
6. Lastly, any words of advice for aspiring beauty entrepreneurs?
a) The most critical ingredient? Mental resilience. Before you begin this “game”, ask yourself if you have the resilience to rise - time and time again.
b) Curiosity and a (life-long) quest for learning play a key role.
c) Invest in Relationships– Finding and working with folks that know their “art” and have similar work ethic/values – that is game-changing.
d) Don’t shortchange your product/ service offering – not at the altar of speed, or fads or other factors.
e) Don’t let competition deter you. Yes, beauty is a very crowded market space, yet feeling and looking good is never going to go out of fashion and is as existential as food. The trick is to really, truly, deeply understand who you’re going to serve so you can bring them something they are likely to fall in love with.
