Botnal was created by Hemangi Dhir, who previously worked in corporate finance. The brand launched in April with eight products after two years of development.
Talk to CosmeticDesign-Asia,Dhir said the brand is set to launch nine more products by early June.
“My plan is to have a launch every quarter with about eight to 10 products. After two years I would have about 50 products. I also plan to introduce new products for children and babies.
Dhir acknowledged that the Indian skincare market is currently very saturated. However, she believes it is filled with “more of the same”products and the company aims to develop and introduce new products to the market.
“Yes, the market is very saturated, but it is saturated with the same product. Right now it’s serums – it seems like every brand has more than one serum. My approach is based on the blue ocean strategy and I try to fill in all the gaps. I may have launched eight products, but they are all quite specialized. »
She explained that the products she had launched included essence, cleansing butter and neck cream – products which she said were not as easy to find in the local market.
Dhir believes the brand is currently catching up with the market, which has accelerated rapidly over the past two years.
“I feel like I’ve come to a point where I could have jumped in a year ago and captured a bigger share of the market. Towards the start of the pandemic, we saw a lot of people learning about it. more on skincare and the market has really accelerated, we’ve seen a number of companies launched in the second half of 2019 that have been very successful at this point.
On the other hand, she noted that the brand has an opportunity to capitalize on the growing demand for clean beauty products.
“In particular, the clean beauty and wellness industry still has a lot of growth potential. So yeah, it’s still a good time for us. I think the growth [of skin care] is going to continue until 2030, so we still have eight years in space to really get things going.
Improve circularity
In addition to developing new products, the company is working to improve the circularity of its business.
Dhir told us this is a complex problem that the company is slowly working on, starting with using biodegradable ingredients and recyclable packaging materials like glass.
She added that the next step would be to explore paper packaging materials and the goal was to have 100% biodegradable packaging. Another area the company is exploring is recycled ingredients from the food industry.
