How entrepreneur Michelle Ranavat re-imagined some of the most time-tested Ayurvedic beauty rituals

When you walk through the aisles of Sephora or Harrods, among the many international brands, you’ll see a clutch of colourful glass bottles and tubes consisting of traditional Ayurvedic ingredients that your grandmother steadfastly stood by

Michelle Ranavat’s brand-origin story was similar to that of most first-generation Indian Americans: from a young age, she had learned how to oil her hair and scrub herself down and brighten her skin using ingredients like turmeric and yoghurt. But she kept this facet of herself low-key, spending time quieting her Indian-ness as she grew up in a Wisconsin suburb. Years later, after two children, an engineering degree and a ton of experience working in pharmaceuticals, Ranavat knew she wanted to celebrate her culture while infusing it with the learnings she had gleaned.

The end result? In 2017, she launched ‘Ranavat,’ an Ayurvedic-inspired skincare and haircare line that is well researched and clinically tested. It is a brand that captures the zeitgeist and meets the modern beauty consumer (Indian or otherwise) where they are, and the numbers prove it: the brand’s Fortifying Hair Serum racked up a 3500-person waitlist when it was MIA, and Ranavat's growth has been 400% year over year, with three consecutive years of tripled consumer sales.

The beauty industry focuses on trendy ingredients, but Ranavat is rooted in tradition. How do you balance the two?

I believe that Ayurveda is incredibly positioned to connect with today’s consumer. The history, tradition and cultural connection draw us in and provide us with a purpose. The results are incredible as well! My philosophy with Ranavat is to combine both the rich history and prove the results, the way today’s consumer is accustomed to experiencing a result-oriented skincare regime.

For a long time we thought there had to be culturally-driven brands or clinical brands, but my hope with Ranavat is that we can do both. To achieve this, we have conducted clinical third-party testing on our hero treatments and the results were amazing. While ingredients like retinol have undergone thousands of studies, saffron or a herb like bakuchi have just a few. The hope is that we create more awareness about these ingredients and prove their efficacy. I believe many of Ayurveda’s ingredients will be tomorrow’s buzz-generating and super-trendy ingredients.

What is today’s modern beauty consumer looking for?

Customers today are looking for results. Ayurveda has some incredible results to offer, but the ingredients are newer to the skincare world (like saffron, manjistha and even bakuchi). For our brand, this gap has been bridged by clinical testing—helping to prove the results we knew existed all along and speaking to the efficacy that Ayurveda has to offer. The packaging, however, largely comprises beautiful jewel tones and is super-romantic—a nod to the rich Rajasthani culture. I love having a balance between romance and science. Now we don’t have to sacrifice a beautifully packaged product for clinical results.

Our target audience is the results-oriented luxury consumer. While we have a very strong South Asian base, we are seeing so much adoption across the spectrum of cultures and even around the world. I get so excited thinking about how many new people will discover Ayurveda and how beneficial it is for the skin.

While I love traditional Indian ingredients, I don't like DIYs as they don't always work for me. How have you been able to engineer your formulations so the active ingredients work consistently while maintaining the original process of making them?

We definitely take a sophisticated and differentiated approach to [make] our formulations. For example, the Resurfacing AHA Saffron Masque is inspired by the turmeric-and-saffron brightening mask people made at home. To create our treatment, we use a blend of manjistha, turmeric and lotus seeds, and add a blend of papaya enzyme and fruit AHAs (mango, mombin fruit and banana). Both parts of this blend are then infused into a rich aloe base to soothe the skin while brightening it. Oftentimes, at-home masks can either be too weak or too strong, and, not to mention, messy.

I’m obsessed with saffron as an ingredient. Its brightening results are incredible, and it also calms me and puts me in a meditative space. We recently received the results of the use of bakuchi from a third-party clinical test and 97 per cent of participants were scientifically measured to have a reduction in fine lines and wrinkles. This is a pretty incredible statistic and gets me excited about it as an ingredient.

By packaging the products luxuriously and putting them in formulas that look and feel good to use, you're opening Ayurveda up to a whole new audience. Was that a part of your plan?

Absolutely. Like most of us, I grew up with so many of these traditions but felt they were outdated or too medicinal. I wanted it to seamlessly fit into the daily life of a modern skincare enthusiast and not feel like it was from another era. For years, many retailers have been selling bakuchi serums and turmeric masks, but there was no brand that was able to speak to the origin story and history in the mainstream domain. In a way, the product was speaking for itself and fell into a buzzy ‘wellness’ category in stores. Thankfully, as brands started to make more waves in the industry, retailers and consumers began to take notice and we are finally able to tell our story. It helps bring awareness to many Indian traditions such as hair oiling, turmeric masks, kumkumadi serums and more.

Clean beauty is an interesting space because the audience really seeks it out, but the term doesn't mean much. What is your stance on it?

We don’t believe in fear-mongering at all. That being said, we do use high-quality ingredients and avoid fillers or questionable ingredients in our formulations. Our line is sold at some of the most discerning and clean-beauty retailers, but clean-beauty positioning is not why we exist. We offer so much more than being clean and we always want to have our customer discover and use the line because of its incredible results, not because we have scared them into it.

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