Forest Essentials

A power cut during a holiday is an unlikely origin for a beauty empire, but that idle curiosity about how candles are made is where it began. By her late twenties Kulkarni was a single mother of two who had lost both parents in quick succession, and with little capital she started crafting beeswax candles, infused with herbs, pressed flowers and essential oils, out of her garage. A small exhibition sold out, soap followed, and early bulk orders, including from a Delhi hotel, gave the operation enough momentum to become a business rather than a hobby.

The pivot to Ayurvedic skincare came from a frustration she has voiced often: that India, the very home of Ayurveda and thousands of indigenous herbs, had barely translated that knowledge into modern daily-use products, and where it had, it was treated as a budget or wellness niche rather than something aspirational. Her wager was to give the tradition a genuinely luxury footing, pairing recipes drawn from classical texts with ornate packaging and ingredients sourced from regions like the Himalayan foothills.

The clearest expression of that ambition is the Soundarya range, which became the brand's flagship. Its 24-karat-gold-infused night cream reportedly took some fifteen years of development, a deliberately patient timeline that doubles as a statement of intent about heritage and craft over speed-to-market. Saffron-and-neem cleansers and rosewater tonics fleshed out a catalog built around the same heritage-forward, sensory-luxury logic.

Kulkarni later set down the full arc in a memoir, and the brand grew from that garage into one of India's most prominent prestige beauty houses, expanding into markets like the UAE. Its honest limitation is built into its premise: the formulations lean on Ayurvedic principle and traditional sourcing rather than the conventional clinical-trial framework that underpins mainstream dermatological brands.

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