Mira Kulkarni: Pioneer of luxury ayurveda

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Kulkarni wanted to blend the purity and efficacy of ayurveda with luxurious formulations that were easy to use. “We focussed on innovation, textures and fragrance,” she adds. “We were the first company to identify this and there was a segment in the market that didn’t exist before we came in,” she claims. In the first seven to 10 years, Forest Essentials did not spend money on marketing or advertising and relied on word-of-mouth publicity to establish its credibility.

Forest Essentials gradually expanded its range of products and forayed into supplying hotel amenities at luxury hotels and spas. However, a serendipitous meeting with Leonard Lauder, chairman, Estee Lauder, during his visit to India to attend the wedding of Elizabeth Hurley and Indian business tycoon Arun Nayar at a palace in Jodhpur in 2007, marked a major turning point in Kulkarni’s entrepreneurial journey.

“He got a gift of some of our products from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and he was intrigued,” Kulkarni recounts. “He asked his country manager to find out more about our company.” Soon a meeting was scheduled in Delhi. “We chatted and a 30-minute meeting went on for 2 hours,” she adds. “We discussed how his mother had started Estee Lauder and we found that our story was similar.”

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A couple of months later, Estee Lauder invested an undisclosed amount in Forest Essentials. “We did not fully realise the larger implications at that time. It was not the money, which was, shall I say, minimal, but we wanted to have this aspirational beauty brand on the table to help take Forest Essentials global,” Kulkarni says.

The global cosmetics giant is not involved in the day-to-day operations of Forest Essentials. The management has two board meetings each year to discuss long-term strategy and global expansion plans. “We have learnt some invaluable things from them, such as incorporating the highest standards of quality control in our manufacturing processes,” Kulkarni shares.

Known for her “extreme fixation on quality”, Kulkarni has earned goodwill as one of the pioneers of luxury ayurveda. The emergence of VC-backed new-age beauty companies has put the spotlight on what it takes to build a credible brand—that stands out from the clutter—in times of unsustainable beauty fads, steep discounts and copycats. Kulkarni agrees that this is a challenge. “I’m amazed to suddenly see these 30,000 brands… where have they come from… and they all look like clones of each other,” she says.

Despite rampant predatory pricing and marketing exuberance at play in the industry, Kulkarni is steadfast about not going down that road to grow the business. “Going digital has been a strategy in recent years to reach a wider audience,” she says. “Here the whole discounted game comes into play, and this is something that I am not personally comfortable with,” she adds. “A company that offers 70 percent discount all the time has eroded the brand completely whether they have made money or not.”