In this episode of the Founder's Series, we have the wonderful pleasure of interviewing fellow founder Chandana Arora of Vanaha Botanicals.
Could you please introduce yourself?
I'm Chandana, the founder of Vanaha Botanicals. Our skincare brand is based on natural skincare science, and it's inspired by my love for nature and holistic living. We create clean green beauties keeping in mind that we nourish the skin from within making you look radiant and healthy.
And when did you create the brand?
I'm a nature lover and I love working with natural ingredients and it's always been my passion. I find it very therapeutic and very calming.
My journey began when I was a teenager and when I had an acne prone skin so we are really going back in time, and I was treating my skin with ingredients from the kitchen and Ayurvedic herbs and surprisingly they really benefited me and better than the creams that the mainstream industry was selling at that point of time.
Vanaha
And it was back then that this instilled in me a faith in the power of botanicals and seeing my interest and passion in creating I mean using natural remedies to cure skin problems. My mother gifted me a book which I still have, and I want to show you all because. It's very precious so this is the book and it's the Piper book of beauty.
It was published in 1979, and it has beautiful natural remedies to use, and I still sometimes go back to it to see what I can take from it. And I'll also be posting natural remedies from this book from time to time. So do stay tuned for my Instagram stories but then at that point of time there was no concept of indie beauty brands and there were no schools over there. So I come from an era where parents would push their children into becoming doctors and engineers.
Vanaha
And I also took up homeopathy and then I left it midway I got married and then I had children got into the system of running the house but that childhood love for formulating remained somewhere and much later in life I started to formulate again and I was doing it for friends and family and I got a very positive response and that encouraged even more. And then I chanced upon the formula Botanica and that was the turning point in my life.
I have to say this because I'm grateful to them for the knowledge, the expertise and the confidence that I got and I also connected with a lot of formulators from across the globe and got to learn so much of them and I'm truly grateful to all of them also. I also believe in having a passion which is constructive one that benefits the others and gives you satisfaction. And for me the passion is one and
What inspired the name Vanaha organics. Does it have a meaning to you?
Vanaha is a Sanskrit word, and it means forest or wilderness. And I kept this name to suggest that we are harnessing the pure untouched power of nature in our products.
And what are you most proud of since you started your brand?
We are 90% into waterless beauties balms. And they are very potent and very concentrated. And you can call them pressed serums because of the exotic ingredients that are going into it so and they're very precious to me because a lot of thought and R D is involved before I create
What's the mission behind your brand?
The mission behind our brand is to actually help women who are going through menopause or they are perimenopausal because they are facing a plethora of skin care challenges like dry skin and fine lines, wrinkles, lack of firmness and so on .
And our brand is there to hold their hands and help them age gracefully and delay signs of aging. So that's the main mission. And we are creating beautiful concentrated botanical balms for them. And they are very high, full concentrate, almost driven.
So I want to have programs in which I am guiding and through my posts also and a lot of women talk to me also. So I'm very happy that I'm able to do that because I'm a yoga enthusiast and I am a nature lover. And I'm a lot into holistic lifestyle. So, for me it's very important to convey that one should include a good diet, a good sleep pattern, exercises or yoga, whatever pranayama is, which are breathing techniques and meditation.
This should be a part of your life too. And then I think you're sorted. If you have all this in your life you're sorted, then. And for me pranayama has given me outstanding results. It leaves you energized. It gives you a lot of peace. And that's what is most important in life. I feel peaceful and so we are here to make you look good and make you feel healthy and positive.
What's your approach to product development and what's the role that natural ingredients play in your formulas?
The first step is to identify the problem and then look for ingredients that would help solve that skin problem. And then R and D is forever. I'm sure you would agree to it. O eta R and D is actually forever.
And so we like to keep in mind the ORAC scale which is the oxygen radical absorbance capacity. It's the unit to measure the strength of antioxidants and we want lots and lots of antioxidants in our products because we want to make potent formulations.
So that is always kept in mind. That's the priority for us. And then we are studying the profiles the therapeutic properties of plant oils and botanicals and essential oils and natural butters because that's what we are working with.
So that goes in and then of course then we are taking feedback and then we are very open to negative feedback because that is what helps us to improve. Eyes and then there are constant improvisations and then there are constant improvisations in the formulation till we reach the desired result. The approach is slow and growing beauty.
We are infusing our plant oils with botanicals. For almost six to eight weeks, we strain and then we re-infuse again for a higher potency. And then we are using a lot of CO2 two extracts also and natural butters and exotic plant oils.
Recently we have just decided to go for this ultrasound assisted extraction to extract the bioactive compounds from the plants. So that's our next step to make the formulations more potent and then the refined deodorized plant oils and botanicals are an absolute NO NO for us.
We hate that because all the healing fraction lies in the colored component. And we love to work with plant pigments: the xanthophylls, the yellow of xanthophylls, the vivid orange of carotenoids, the green of chlorophylls and the purple and blue of anthocyanins has to be in the formulation to be effective.
So that is why we have these different kinds of colored press serums or bombs whatever you'd like to call and then it is also important that you should keep in mind what kind of a regimen you are giving to your customer before you develop your product.
For us it is minimalistic. We don't believe in layering because that is complicated and the customers sometimes in fact, I think most of the time tend to skip such a complicated skincare routine. So I personally feel it should be minimalistic and ours is minimalistic.
We have cleansers and then we have a gentle physical scrub. We have some beautiful face masks which have some lovely exotic ingredients in them. And so, we have cleansers. We have a balm to milk and oil to milk and a powder cleanser. And then we have a toner which is the silver and rose water face mist.
What is your personal favorite in the Vanaha Brand line?
I am very fond of the Blue Lagoon solid serum and I'm extremely fond of the calendula balm also because we are growing calendula and you would be surprised to know that before they are they are slightly when they are slightly withered and before they fall to the ground, we have them plugged and it's an everyday activity.
And then we are infusing in Hoba oil for so many weeks and then straining and reinfusing. And then we are using bakuri butter in this which is so amazing. It's from the Amazonian forests. And so, this has given me such good results all my eight spots and pigmentation and all has really gone down. So, these two are my personal favorites, even Mandarin blue.
Chandana when we're building a brand the common challenge, we all face is that there's a lot of brands. How do you stand out right?
The USP of our brand is to take care of the skin problems faced by 40 plus women because they are potent concentrated press serums that we have more in our product line and it has proved it has given very good results to them. So, this has been our USP and not too many brands are taking care of it. skin challenges faced by perimenopausal and menopausal women and the USP is also slow green beauty and to use herbs which are freshly dried.
That's very important because I have seen that if you are using natural ingredients which are months old or have been dried a year back then the efficacy of the product really matters. It's a rule that natural ingredients lose their efficacy with time so it's very important that the herbs and botanicals are freshly dried. So that's our USP.
So for that we are making small batches, and we are maintaining an apothecary. We are growing herbs literally so that they can be freshly plugged and dried. That is what makes the product potent and effective. So, we are growing butterfly pea flowers we are growing calendula we are growing hemp we are growing pussy we are growing viscous so and few more.
Are you selling to Canada, the USA or North America?
No, we would soon be. But it's in the pipeline. I want to because I think people who are in the colder regions would enjoy our bombs all the more. So, I do want to touch the UK and Canada and all definitely. So, it's in the pipeline and hopefully soon we would be I think
Do you have help when it comes to production?
Yes we have a lot of women who are working for us and we are also working with farmers. We are working with beekeepers because we are using raw honey in our scrub, and we are also taking honeycombs and extracting our own beeswax in house to a certain extent. Sometimes we buy also. So it's like that and but I like to keep things in my hand
Did you find that locally in India you have a good base of audience and customers who know the brand and who are enjoying the products as well?
Oh yes. And I have a lot of local customers also. My local clients are a lot, and they like to come into the lab and see and so I really enjoy that as well when they come, they walk, and they like to smell. And sometimes I also customize for them if they would want a particular essential oil and a certain kind.
And when they come to me, they want to show their skin and they want to talk and they want to and then I also like to talk about a holistic lifestyle with them. That's so important. So I really enjoy my work. I enjoy it so much. It's literally it's my baby and it has grown.
If a new consumer were coming to you and they want to know in very quick words what's special about this brand?
We are making waterless beauties. They are concentrated, they are potent and very little is required, and they are very effective, and they are 100% like plants. It's all based on plants and botanicals and natural butters. And I would like to say that these products are as close to nature as it can get. Okay? With no synthetics, no preservatives, no fillers? So that's how I would like to summarize. That's nature as far as they can get.
What were some of your main challenges that you encountered when you were building van Hana organics and how did you overcome those challenges?
I have come a long way from formulating in the kitchen and then finally I have a lab, and I have a place where one hour exists and initially it was fun, and it could be easily managed because it was on a very small scale. And then I did. And then I decided to launch my brand in June 2021 and then came the challenges and marketing was the biggest challenge for me. And it was very difficult for me to get work done out of them.
And I really faced a lot of difficulty. But I was fortunate to have joined this organization. People in India must be knowing about it. It's called picky flow, and it supports women led businesses and they provided me with mentoring programs and they were very effective for me.
They really proved good for me because I got to learn branding on the business canvas, unit economics and how to build a pitch deck and so on and so forth. And that really helped me scale my business to the next level. And then who can be better than you yourself?
Are you growing the herbs, making all of this and managing?
Enthusiasm in one's life. I feel if you are constantly learning something, be a learner for life. And lastly and the most important is that I think you should do your work honestly and you should have a very clear conscience because that is what gives results and that is what is going to take you places because that has taken me also places because of honest clean work that's very important. And you should have a clear conscience.
It's very important when you're not getting lost in a world of making money. And I think your ethics and your values should stay whatever you are doing. So that's very important. And so yes so what are you waiting for? You should just take the plunge. And I'm sure there'll be no looking back for you exactly.
What's one thing that you're the proudest of with your brand?
I'm proud of the fact that it's very close to nature what we are doing and it's literally nature in a bottle for us. And I'm very happy that we are using the natural butters and botanicals and all to create and we are waterless so that kind of we don't we don't need to bother about synthetics and preservatives and to increase the shelf life and stuff like that. So that's what I'm proud of.
And I'm proud that we are doing these beautiful concentrated botanical bombs which are really not there in the market. And I feel that they should be there though we have creams also, but they are just three creams we have right now with us and but I'm a bomb lover and I really want to promote bombs. I think we should promote bombs and press serums because they are so beautiful and they are so pure.
And also, for those who are interested you can shop on her website, and I think she has an exciting promo right now.
We have a promo for the viewers in India. We have a voucher which is worth 1000 rupees and the winner after the lucky draw will be announced tomorrow in the morning. So, stay tuned.
And for those who are interested check out her website check out her Instagram. Go follow and support.
And if you're a founder interested to join our community you can find us at community beauty entrepreneurship and mentorship on Facebook. So, click to join. You can also click on the link in view to join our Facebook group. We'd love to have you and uh stay tuned for another exciting interview and webinars and insightful information as well.
