The Lakmé That Simone Built

Simone Tata passed away recently. She was the pioneer-innovator of the beauty business in India. She was one of Rediffusion’s earliest clients, and together they created some iconic, unforgettable campaigns for Lakmé.

- Carol Goyal

Simone Tata met Diwan Arun Nanda at a party. The year was perhaps 1977 or 1978. They got chatting about beauty and beautiful creatives. And that is where this enchanting story begins.

Rediffusion, born in 1973, was by then already making waves as India’s very own red-hot creative agency. Simone asked a then-young-20-something Arun Nanda to think up some ‘great stuff’ on Lakmé. Simone said that cosmetics as a category was showing almost no growth, with consumers mostly concentrated in the larger cities. Nanda said he needed time to study the category, and understand for himself consumer motivations and expectations (what else would you expect from the very first gold-medalist of IIM Ahmedabad?!).

Lakmé, the brand, had been launched by JRD Tata in 1952 at the personal request of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to create India's own cosmetic brand, saving precious foreign exchange spent on imported Western makeup and providing products tailored for Indian skin tones and preferences. Simone Tata (JRD’s cousin Naval Tata’s French wife and Ratan Tata’s stepmother) started to helm the business some years later. Lakmé was then a brand of TOMCO (Tata Oil Mills Company).