Mayur Abhaya on Areoveda’s journey to be a high performance skincare brand

Adgully has been turning the spotlight on the entrepreneurs who fought against all odds to bring their dreams to fruition in our special series – START-UP STARS. We at Adgully wholeheartedly support the ‘Vocal for Local’ movement and have been featuring numerous local/ homegrown businesses, brands, and Apps in the country launched in the last few years.

In this interaction with Adgully, Mayur Abhaya, Founder, Areoveda, shares his insights on blending ancient wisdom with modern science to create holistic wellness solutions. Discover his vision for redefining self-care through innovative and sustainable practices.

AreoVeda was born from a commitment to safeguard the health of future generations. Could you elaborate on the vision and mission behind the brand, and how it reflects the values and expertise of LifeCell?

AreoVeda is an extension of the promise, wherein we developed products that will keep newborns away from the impact of harmful toxins that find their way into the baby’s blood and affect their growth and development.

LifeCell has got two generations giving newborns in our country the opportunity to have the best start in life, but offering a variety of vital healthcare services such as having life-saving stem cells from the umbilical cord preserved for a lifetime of use, and also having the genetic code mapped right at birth so that preventive action can be taken to minimize the impact of serious inborn conditions.

The discovery of over 200 toxic chemicals in cord blood was a significant turning point. What were the biggest challenges you faced in addressing this issue through AreoVeda, and how did you overcome them?

Ingredients and Tests were the two biggest challenges we had to address. It wasn’t easy to identify key ingredients that can meet the criteria of safety and performance yet are natural in origin with all the traceability data required by international certification bodies. We, in fact, had to make some of the key ingredients ourselves, wherein we leveraged the Cryogenic expertise of LifeCell, for example, to come up with ‘CryoGold’ – the world’s first EcoCert certified 24k micro particles of gold.

In testing, given that animal testing is banned in cosmetics, and direct-to-human testing was the only route used by brands in India. We didn’t feel comfortable with that. Especially when you need to test hundreds of ingredients and tens of formulations. L’Oreal had utilised lab grown human skin models to solve for this, but this service wasn’t available by labs in India. It was a Eureka moment for us, and these skin models were based on human stem cells, wherein LifeCell had significant expertise. This was deployed to create 15+ tests to support the various claims of safety and performance, thereby allowing AreoVeda to be a high performance skincare brand that one can trust.

Launching a new brand in the competitive skincare industry requires substantial investment. Could you discuss how AreoVeda navigated access to funding and investments during its inception and growth?

AreoVeda was incubated as a new venture within LifeCell, and hence, no external capital was raised to support this. However, given the high-tech to support this project, it took substantial upfront investment to set up the lab and obtain the international certificate prior to launch, and almost a time of 3 years.

With AreoVeda emphasizing rigorous testing through lab-made human equivalent skin models, how do you see this innovation setting a benchmark for trust and safety in the skincare industry?

We’ve taken, for example, widely acknowledged natural ingredients in Ayurveda, and screened them at various concentrations in lab-grown human skin cell lines for safety and performance. For example, to claim anti-aging properties we could see the increase in collagen produced in the exposed skin cells, and for claiming increased blood circulation we could see the increase in blood capillaries in the exposed cells. For claiming zero toxicity, we could see that the viability of cells was similar to that when they were exposed to water.

We didn’t restrict ourselves to just our own claims, but also pursued international certifications from bodies such as Ecocert and EWG, which less than 1% of cosmetics brands qualify for.

Clearly, we believe these would establish new benchmarks for the industry in India.

The skincare market in India is evolving rapidly. How do you project its growth compared to global markets, and what key trends and drivers do you think will define its future?

A big trend in India now is that customers are moving away from just natural ingredients to look at high performance ingredients that meet their cosmetic goals. AreoVeda is in a unique position, as its origin is rooted in nature, but backed by high-tech science that meets performance standards.

As AreoVeda continues to grow, could you share your strategic goals for expansion, including new product lines or markets you are planning to enter?

AreoVeda seeks to extend care to mothers and babies in India by extending in other categories such as hair care and oral care. With our products already meeting international benchmarks, we would want to foray into developed markets such as UAE and USA.

What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs aspiring to launch purpose-driven brands in sectors like healthcare and skincare? How can they balance innovation with consumer trust?

Identifying key gaps in the market, and utilising the best in advanced sciences to address them provides opportunity to transcend being just another brand. Not settling for what's already there, but raising the bar to what’s already there gives an opportunity to have a shot at sustainable long term success.