A team of doctors has formed a start up to take lead in India’s skincare front

Alarmed by people’s ignorance about ingredients of day-to-day skin regime, Mohit Bhatia decided to enter the natural skincare market in India and hence ‘Fuschia’ was born. Taking a leaf out of its parent company Vkare Bio Sciences in 2013, Fuschia has been consistently evolving and has established itself as a brand dedicated to natural , handmade skincare products.

“We started with natural, handmade soaps (initially 10 variants , now expanded to 50+ variants) and today we have range of skincare including Day Cream, Anti-ageing Night Cream,and Cleopatra’s Secret Body Bath,” said Bhatia.

How it started?
“Having studied the never ending market of skincare products in India and abroad we realised that most of the labels were fraught with harsh chemicals. We started off as a team of doctors with an inclination towards skincare in a natural way. To our surprise, the majority of customers were more or less unaware of the ingredients they were feeding their skin. However, of late many global brands have come up with the idea of natural skincare. Though the idea of chemical free skincare has been widely accepted by our Indian customer base but ‘natural skincare’ still remains a blanket term for many,” said Bhatia.

The ever growing demand for and existing confusion about ‘natural skincare’ have been strategically exploited by lot of labels. Just adding the label of Natural, Herbal, Ayurvedic don’t make it so. It’s the situation that made Fuschia to promote ‘natural skincare’ as products essentially free of SLS, Parabens, Pthalates, Mineral oils, Synthetic colours and fragrances.

Handmade
The manufacturing process is ‘handmade’. The production batches are small and this also ensures that the products reach customers in their freshest form. The constant endeavour to provide the customers the best for their skin and at the same time contributing towards saving the ecosystem from harsh chemicals makes the brand appreciable.

Funding
Currently a self funded organization, Fuschia works along with a network of 100+ ecommerce portals. Among the distribution channels, Fuschia has collaborated with subscription boxes and retail stores.



Challenges
“Being a team of medicos, manufacturing skincare products was not our forte. It was a challenge researching on production of such a range. With great efforts and lot of technical support from people associated with the field we started off with this humongous task of making ‘Fuschia’. Since our launch we have had limited financial resources and with no investors we stuck to being bootstrapped. It was not an easy job to sell a new skincare brand in this very competitive market, and to the customers with ample knowledge and affinity to the existing big names in the industry. When it came to marketing and promotion of the brand, paucity of funds once again stood in the way,” said Bhatia.

Market size & opportunity
According to International market research agencies, personal care industry demand in this segment was over $7.6 billion (approx Rs 50,000 crore) in 2012 and is expected to reach $13.2 billion (approx Rs 80,000 crore) by 2018, growing at a CAGR of 9.6 per cent from 2012 to 2018.

Indian consumers are now more aware and conscious of their health & beaity choices, and there is a growing demand for chemical free skincare products and our brand caters to the needs of this health conscious segment.