If you want skincare that is gentle on the skin and is made with naturally derived actives, think Vilvah. The Coimbatore-based brand mainly focuses on the beauty and simplicity of milk when used on your skin.
Krithika Kumaran, the founder of Vilvah, calls herself an ‘accidental entrepreneur’. Married at 21, she was a homemaker for 10 years before stepping into a career at 31. “I started Vilvah for very personal reasons. I lost my mother to a skin-related issue in 2016. When she was around, she’d always ask me to make her soaps, but I procrastinated and never did it. At the time, my 7-year-old daughter suffered from eczema, and I thought it was high time I gave it a shot. We come from an agricultural background, so I began experimenting with goat milk soaps,” she reflects.
Kitchen counter full, dining table piled with soaps—she posted about them on Facebook in 2017. Friends and family reached out, wanting to try her soaps. They became her first customers. Her husband was supportive from day one, but had one piece of advice for her: don’t sell anything you make without a brand name. He joined her as the co-founder, and that’s how Vilvah was born. For the first three months after launching the brand, she took orders via Instagram or WhatsApp before launching a website. The first customer to place an order on the website shared her mother’s name, and that’s when she knew it was a sign to never turn back. What started as a kitchen experiment with an investment of 5,000-10,000 now has 250+ employees working in a 50,000 sq.ft. facility and 11 retail outlets.
Kruthika and Kumaran, the founders of Vilvah
The brand somehow fell into using milk as its base for the majority of its products. “The beauty of this journey is I didn’t believe that milk could become the foundation of our brand at all. I simply wanted to experiment. I did a natural cosmetology course once I got into soapmaking, and learnt how good goat milk is for dry skin, so I wanted to try it for my daughter. We made a mistake by not defining our brand as milk-based. People were already associating Vilvah with milk, but we hadn’t gotten there yet,” Kruthika chuckles.
In 2022, they launched a Signature Milk collection, using vegan milks as well, like soy, almond, oat, and rice milk. Milk is globally known for its moisturising properties, so the brand didn’t have to do much in the way of educating their customers. The information was already there. While designing a product, they first list all the concerns it must address and then link a milk accordingly. They have an R&D team and labs to validate product formulations. With growth comes hurdles.
Vilvah’s range of products include serums, shampoos, creams, lip balms, and more
When asked about challenges in the early days versus now, Kruthika ponders before answering, “In the initial stages, sourcing good-quality raw materials was our main concern with the small amounts that we needed. We needed to find reliable, unadulterated ingredients that were safe on the skin. Now, even though the team is much bigger and growing steadily, resources remain a challenge. We operate from a tier-2 city, and it is sometimes difficult to find materials and human resources for the kind of work we do. Supply chain is also a hassle, since we work in different markets. We are, however, a consumer-obsessed brand, so we always take their insights and feedback and try to implement them, no matter how hard it is.”
She talks about the valuable lessons she has learnt over the years. The biggest one, she says, is to double down when you have an opportunity and to never miss out on its potential. She also stresses the importance of building a team and delegating tasks; it’s highly impossible to do everything alone. Earlier, she did the formulation, making, packing, and shipping by herself. As time went on, she built a team just as committed to creating natural, safe products.
The brand balances traditional ingredients and modern science. “Milk is a natural ingredient, but we take molecular components from it to use in our products. For example, with rice milk, we don’t just use the milk directly; we extract a particular active from it, which has benefits to address a specific concern. It’s the same with turmeric, which is an ingredient, but we extract curcumin from it, which contributes a host of benefits for your skin. We blend nature and science, because a consumer isn’t paying for the ingredients used; they’re paying for the efficacy of the product,” Kruthika describes their process.
Vilvah positions itself as an authentically Indian brand. “Ayurveda is an Indian thing, but we don’t promote it. It’s the same with yoga and spirituality; things that originated here aren’t recognised and understood here as much as they are in Western countries. Korean beauty is one form, and Indians are obsessing over it. We have so much in India, and as entrepreneurs, it is our responsibility to bring innately Indian ingredients to the forefront and go global with them. 10-15 years ago, there wasn’t much demand for Indian products, but now, fortunately, it has changed. We don’t know what we have, and we’d like to change that, or at least work towards it a little bit in our own way,” she smiles.
Under Eye Cream
In the beginning, they used ingredients from her own farm, but as they scaled, it became a problem to procure such high amounts. “We began sourcing ingredients like aloe vera, coconut oil, rosemary, and some of the goat milk from neighbouring farms and farmer organisations. It’s extremely fulfilling that we get to support farmers. For our brand’s CSR, my husband and I decided from the very beginning that our allotted budget would go towards farmers. We regularly conduct educational workshops on organic farming and how to increase their yield for the farmers,” Kruthika says.
Trying to stand out in a market where countless brands promote being organic or sustainable is hard. Kruthika explains, “Our USP used to be that we used natural ingredients and actives, but over the years, there have been so many brands with the same positioning. We had, around the same time, gotten more serious about sustainability ourselves, so we pushed for plastic-free packaging and increased our efforts.”
We asked Kruthika about her favourite customer story. She smiles as she narrates, “There are so many, but one really stands out. One customer who suffered severe hair loss used our hair oil. Her hair loss was permanently reversed, and she regained her confidence. She had a baby and named her Vilvah! It was the sweetest moment and something I’ll never forget.”
To conclude, she talks about what drives her: “Not many people get the opportunity to run a business, serve so many consumers, and have this kind of workforce. I’m grateful every single day. I don’t need much more motivation than that to keep going.”
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