Clean beauty in India: New beauty brand Minimalist says education a 'key strategic pillar' to drive growth

Developed by Indian firm Uprising Science, Minimalist was launched in India last September to fill what it saw was a gap in the skin care market for a clean beauty brand that offered consumers transparency in its ingredients.

“The local market is mostly following the organic and natural movement. We have set ourselves apart in the market as a clean beauty brand, meaning that the ingredients that we use – natural or synthetic – are best suited for the skin,” ​explained Kavita Yardev, head of marketing for Minimalist.

As part of its commitment to transparency, the brand discloses all its ingredients, the concentrations of the actives as well as its ingredient suppliers.

Yardev told CosmeticsDesign-Asia​ that the brand’s launch was a huge success, with sales that were 10 to 15 times what the company expected.

“Honestly, it was quite surprising. Every new brand starts slow and we expected to take our time to slowly build up the brand by educating the consumer about our products and skin care in general.”​

The company attributes its booming entry into the market to the consumer desire for more honesty and transparency from brands.

“This is being driven by a group of people that the community looks up as the ‘skin care experts’. You can say they are mini influencers. These influencers have travelled, and they know about clean beauty brands such as Drunk Elephant and Inkey List, and they are educating their audience about these brands,” ​said Yardev.

As such international brands are more difficult to come by in India, Yardev said word of a local clean and transparent beauty brand took off.

“While these influencers may like international brands, it's not something they can recommend to their audiences because not everyone can afford to it. So, when they tried our product, they were eager to recommend it. You can say the demand was already there and we just made it accessible to the consumer.”​

Yardev highlighted that the company has yet to start its paid advertising campaign and the buzz around the brand is completely organic.

“We’ve seen significant growth in terms of awareness and mentions on YouTube and Instagram. Every time there’s a new video on YouTube about our brand, we see a huge spike in our sales.”​

Growth through education

Moving forward, the company’s strategy to continuing driving growth is to educate consumers about skin care.

“Today, there are more people interested in skin care and they are interested in learning about ingredients and how they work on the skin. It’s no longer just about the labels. What’s driving this growth is education about skin care,” ​said Yardev.

To tap into this, the company uses its website and social accounts like Instagram to provide education about the skin.

The firm has seen high engagement on its educational social posts, which validated its belief that consumers are hungry for more information.

“If we can raise awareness and education in one person, that one person can spread it to their friends through word-of-mouth. Therefore, we believe that if education about skin care grows, our brand will automatically grow with it,”​ Yardev said.

Currently, the brand plans to concentrate its efforts in the local market, said Yardev.

“It’s such a huge market with untapped opportunities. India’s market is still very basic. For instance, people are only just starting to use sunscreen and the vitamin C trend is still very new as well. There are plenty of gaps that we can fill.”​