FOREST ESSENTIALS

By ARNIKA THAKUR

KULK ARNI: COURTESY OF FOREST ESSENTIALS

Forest Essentials has grown from a single store in Delhi
when the Ayurvedic beauty company launched 19 years
ago to around 70 stores across the country today. Now it
has its eyes firmly fixed on the international market.
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MIRA KULKARNI, chairman and managing director, Mountain Valley Springs (Forest Essentials)


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FOREST ESSENTIALS

VER THE AGES, people have been obsessed with the quest for beauty
and eternal youth. It is said Cleopatra bathed in the milk of asses.
And Mary Queen of Scots washed her face with white wine. And in
India, Ayurvedic beauty company Forest Essentials buries dates and
litchis under a banyan tree to ferment to make its Eternal Youth
anti-ageing cream. Ancient Ayurvedic wisdom says that under
the shade of the banyan tree, the fruit ferments at a certain pace.
If there is too much sun, it will ferment too quickly; if it doesn’t
have enough, it ferments slowly. And while workers at the Forest Essentials factory
are mixing the ingredients for the cream—described as an ancient formulation from
the early 17th century—they chant special mantras. “It’s for positive vibrations. I have
been asked over the years, ‘Do they really do this chant?’ They really do. It imbibes the
energy into the product,” Mira Kulkarni, chairman and managing director of Mountain
Valley Springs, the parent company of Forest Essentials, tells me in an interview at her
home in Panchsheel Park, an upscale New Delhi neighbourhood.

Sceptics might dismiss the chanting as nothing more than has been shipping its cosmetics to more than
mumbo-jumbo. But the soft-spoken Kulkarni has clearly cracked 120 countries. And now it is readying to go
the magic formula. The 63-year-old fine arts graduate started the global by opening stores abroad and partner-
company at the onset of the millennium with just some handmade ing with high-end department stores such as
soaps first given to family and friends. It was a small personally Harrods and Selfridges. It is in the process
funded project that went back to the roots of Ayurveda with a of getting EU and USFDA certification and
manufacturing unit in a remote village called Lodsi in the Tehri sewing up partnerships for countries where
Garhwal region of Uttarakhand. One of the first things she did was it cannot open standalone stores. It plans to
buy an old-fashioned oil press which, she says, no one knew how to launch its global operations next year. Samrath
 All processes at Forest Essentials are driven by hand, including traditional pounding of herbs and pressing of oils.
use. All of the processes were driven by hand, including traditional Bedi, Kulkarni’s son and the company’s execu-
pounding of herbs, pressing of oils, and rolling of incense sticks. In tive director, is confident the brand will work
2002, Forest Essentials received its first small institutional order overseas. Bedi cites online sales as a vote of
from the Hyatt Regency, New Delhi. confidence in Forest Essentials: “There are lots India in an e-mail. “We have already identified potential distribu- and wealthy landowners. But there was a new
Today, Kulkarni has a huge portfolio of carefully curated creams of repeat customers. And it is not just the usual tion opportunities by leveraging our global network of partners in consumer in the market. So when Kulkarni
and lotions made from natural ingredients such as roses shipped suspects like Japan, the U.S., and the U.K. We international markets... We believe that we can help in even more decided to sell her handmade soaps for `100,
from Kannauj, lemongrass from Ooty, and sandalwood from are getting orders from Nigeria and all kinds of ways to leverage our global go-to-market capabilities, which have a huge sum for soap at the time, there was no
Mysuru. Her products, ranging from the date and litchi cream to places. There is a market out there. These are helped our brands such as Estée Lauder, Clinique, Bobbi Brown, La shortage of takers. She explains that there were
a 24-carat-gold-based Soundarya Radiance cream, are sold across countries we haven’t marketed in.” Mer, MAC, and Jo Malone London become global powerhouses.” always Indian women who would go abroad
70 stores in India. And her list of clients includes big hotel chains The fact that Forest Essentials already has But how did an Ayurveda brand started by an entrepreneur with and spend a hefty `25,000 on a cream. “You
like Taj Hotels, The Oberoi Group, The Ritz Carlton, and The Four a partnership with luxury giant Estée Lauder no business degree or experience become one of the most popular still have those women and will always have
Seasons. A lime, tulsi, and narangi range is specially blended for will help its global expansion plans. In 2007, Indian luxury skincare brands? Kulkarni attributes it to her in- those women, but the interesting thing is that a
The Oberoi Group; Taj Hotels has a special aloe vera and neem Estée Lauder picked up a 20% stake in the stincts: “It wasn’t a business, it never started as a business. It never lot of the people who are buying our creams are
range; and the Marriott uses a bitter orange and cinnamon col- Indian firm, its first investment in India. Daniel even evolved as a business until much later.” Soon after she set up people who were buying La Mer,” she says.
lection. Forest Essentials also supplies to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Rachmanis, president, Latin America, The Es- the company, Kulkarni opened her first standalone store in Delhi’s

B
Mountain Valley Springs posted total revenues of `177 crore in tée Lauder Companies, who sits on the Indian Khan Market, one of the world’s most expensive retail locations.
2017-18, up from `137.4 crore the previous year, according to finan- firm’s board, says his company has collaborated FAC TORY: COURTESY OF FORES T ESSENTIALS She decided to take the leap despite the high rent. She remembers EDI, WHO JOINED THE BUSINESS in 2003,
cial data from business intelligence platform Tofler. “Forest Essen- with Forest Essentials to ensure the brand eq- the first time the store ran out of its stock, they had to shut it down says that in the early 2000s, the con-
tials has an emotive appeal and an emotive quotient which is very uity, identity, and operations are on track for in- for two days to replenish. “We had no idea of the supply chain, we sumer was mostly attracted to Forest
distinctive, which is very related to the earth. Anything that has to ternational expansion. “To help grow the brand didn’t even know how to outfit the store. We didn’t know how to Essentials’ luxurious looking cream-
do with the water, forest, earth, mud, green, organic, handmade and to propel it on the international stage, we replenish,” she says. and-gold packaging. However, today the
has got fantastic potential,” says brand expert Harish Bijoor. are working together to ensure that the brand is The advent of the company coincided with massive changes in consumer is a lot more aware and demanding.
As it’s grown over the years, New Delhi-based Forest Essentials prepared from a global regulatory perspective, the Indian market. In the first decade post-liberalisation, the pur- “From just looking at the product to smelling
and preparing plans for expansion into foreign chasing power of Indians started increasing. As disposable incomes
markets. Forest Essentials’ Ayurvedic roots are increased, people could splurge on small luxuries such as premium
84 aligned with global consumers’ preferences for cosmetics. It is not to say Indians didn’t have money to spend on 85
F OR T UNEINDI A .C OM // JUNE 2 0 1 9 health and wellness,” Rachmanis told Fortune luxury before that. There were always rich businessmen, maharajas, F OR T UNEINDI A .C OM // JUNE 2 0 1 9
FOREST ESSENTIALS

What we have created as a category, it

has a huge appeal worldwide. I think we have
a billion-dollar brand in our hands.”
Samrath Bedi, executive director, Mountain Valley Springs

the product, then to understanding the product, today it’s actu- able to use in a modern, easy-to-use method,”
ally what’s going into the product. [We are asked] ‘who are you, Bedi says.
where do you make your products, who makes the product for Forest Essentials has also begun a project to
you? Where is it coming from, are you using xyz ingredients in create gardens for herbs across India. Anupam
your product?’ ” he says. Kapoor, head of supply chain and manufactur-
The market for luxury has accelerated in the last decade. A ing who joined last October, says the company
Bain & Co. report says that since the beginning of the journey of is trying to aggregate land holdings so it can
liberalisation in 1991, the average Indian consumer has witnessed get a consistent supply of quality raw materi-
exponential growth in options available in every consumption cat- als. The project, still at a nascent stage, will
egory. Big malls have opened across cities; and luxury brands like make the process of acquiring raw materials
Chanel and Gucci or departmental stores such as French cosmetics easier. “We don’t want to go to someone who
retailer Sephora have made their way to India. does en masse, then we get mixed with the
A Deloitte report titled Global Powers of Luxury Goods 2019 crowd and our essence gets lost somewhere.
says the luxury products market in India continues to experience The solution to this is to work with small land-
a high growth rate. It says the market beyond major metros and owners, and see if at some level we can do an
a rise in the number of HENRYs (High Earners, Not Rich Yet) aggregation,” Kapoor says.
spending on luxury goods are largely responsible for the growth. The global beauty, skincare, and cosmetics
“The income-earning capacity and the per capita income of a lot of industry has undergone a sea change in recent
people has increased. The scope of the luxury market is not neces- years. Apart from Korean beauty fads and
sarily with the rich but it is also with the high-earning, not so rich reality television star Kylie Jenner becom-
community,” says Anil Talreja, partner at Deloitte. ing a makeup mogul, there is also increased
Forest Essentials has definitely capitalised on the trend. With interest in natural products. The eternal hunt
just the skincare market in India estimated at $1.8 billion, it has for the ultimate elixir for skin has also brought
expanded beyond the metros to open shops in smaller cities like the West to the doorstep of the East. Coconut
Indore, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, and Kochi. It has thrived despite oil, Moroccan oil, and such products are now
stiff competition in India’s around $4-billion Ayurvedic cosmetics commonplace. That’s what Forest Essentials is
market with newer players like Kama Ayurveda grabbing market hoping to cash in on. “The [products make up
share. Puig, a Spanish fashion and fragrance company, recently the] high-end market in India because these
invested `100 crore for a minority stake in Kama. are expensive from an Indian standpoint, but
when you use the same price point in U.S. dol-

A
lars or British pounds, then it doesn’t appear
S DEMAND HAS GROWN, Forest
Essentials has stepped up to be that expensive for the consumer of that
the pace of bringing out new products and increased country,” says Talreja.
R&D. Kulkarni says that earlier the company did not The competition will not be easy. There are
launch new products regularly, but now there is more already big brands selling natural and organic
pressure to keep reinventing the brand and a need for constant products in the same price category. Korean
innovation. Bedi adds that the company has pumped up its R&D brands like innisfree are established play-
BEDI: COURTESY OF FOREST ESSENTIALS

spends and team, which consists of [Link], doctors, and chemists ers in the global skincare market, touted to
who help with the formulations. “We do it based on trend; ev- be worth close to $220 billion by 2025. The
erything is based on an old Ayurvedic system but it is tweaked to consumer in the Western and some premier
put in a modern delivery system. That’s what we invented, that Asian markets is spoilt for choice. But Forest
whole niche was to modernise Ayurveda. You get away from that Essentials is unfazed. “What we have created
old time-consuming process but keep the benefits. And then be as a category, it has a huge appeal worldwide.
I think we have a billion-dollar brand in our
hands,” says Bedi.
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