When skincare gets a glow-up

DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER (D2C) START-UP Innovist shot into the big beauty league recently when L'Oreal announced a majority stake in the company with a deal valued at around ₹4,000 crore.

- CHRISTINA MONIZ

The company’s portfolio of brands such as Bare Anatomy, Chemist at Play and SunScoop helped it secure a strong foothold in India’s ₹2.5 lakh crore beauty and personal care market in a span of seven years. Launched in 2018, the company reported a turnover of ₹300 crore in FY25.

Founder and CEO of the company, Rohit Chawla says Innovist was born from a gap in the market — for science-led beauty brands for younger Indian consumers. He founded the company alongside Vimal Bhola — who leads R&D and has decades of experience having developed products for global companies in the UK such as Johnson & Johnson — and Sifat Khurana, who leads brand strategy and consumer storytelling. Chawla leads the consumer business, shaping the company’s strategy and operating model.

“We made a deliberate decision to build our own R&D and manufacturing capabilities before launching a single brand,” says Chawla. “That is an unconventional approach among consumer startups, where brands often come first and product development is outsourced.” The products were created not to brandish trending ingredients but to solve specific consumer problems.