Mira Kulkarni: The Woman That Changed The Face Of Beauty With Forest Essentials

Written by Saumya Gaur  • 

Vanity and beauty are often identified as womanly traits. The indulgence that almost all the women do when it comes to buying beauty products or treatments is dismissed by men, and the society at large, as a silly business.

But when it comes to making money and establishing a stronghold in the traditionally male business world, beauty is something which is taken very seriously. And this fact was recognized by Mira Kulkarni, the founder of the luxury ayurvedic brand, Forest Essentials.

To follow your dream, and make it a reality without compromising on any of its facets is a huge achievement, and it deserves to be lauded. That in doing so, Mira succeeded in breaking the mold and became an outlier in the field of the beauty business is a testament to the potential of her vision and her belief in it. Let’s get to know a little more about Mira and her journey with Forest Essentials.

Mira And Her Vision: A Unique Brand

Image: Instagram @forestessentials

Born in Mumbai, Mira’s schooling took place in Shimla’s Tara Hall. She later went on to attend Stella Martis College in Chennai. The idea for venturing in the beauty business came to Mira when she was in the U.S on a visit to meet her son, and there she visited a Mormon expo, where she saw how they made their own soap.

Watching that Kulkarni thought to herself that while it wasn’t difficult to make quality products, the only difference was what kind of ingredients you use to make that product. When she came back from that trip, she joined a co-operative in Rishikesh which focussed on obtaining and marketing handmade products.

She joined that cooperative to get an idea of how to use ayurvedic processes and ingredients to make handmade soap. It was then that she realized that Rishikesh was the perfect location for this enterprise of hers, as it had a vast reservoir of tiny pharmacies and shops that made and sold homemade ayurvedic lotions, soaps and other concoctions. However, there was a drawback. Most of these products were sold to lower or middle-income groups, so there were some compromises on the quality of the ingredients to make these products cost-effective. Local sellers told Kulkarni that they could make better products (with purer ingredients), but the buyers wouldn’t be willing to pay more.

Kulkarni thought otherwise, and she asked them to create a batch of honey soap for her, which is when the seeds for Forest Essentials were first sown. The soap that they produced for her was made from parts of honeycomb, fresh honey, and a few essential oils. Kulkarni packaged the soap in brown tissue paper, tying it with a fancy ribbon, and sold 50 pieces of them to her friends. The feedback that she got from them was overwhelmingly positive, and that spurred her to put down her own money to fund this business.

Image: Instagram @forestessentials

The idea for iconic mango tree logo that has become the identity of the brand came when her friend, Kiran Nadar, suggested the name, Forest Essentials, to Mira, who then sketched the image of a mango tree and spelled the name around it. This gave an identity to Mira’s passion project.

Breaking Barriers And Shattering The Glass Ceiling

Image: Instagram @forestessentials

That was 19 years ago, today, the brand has a robust presence in the Indian beauty market (68 retail stores in 18 cities across the country) where it has firmly established itself as a pioneer in Luxury Ayurveda (the capitalization is a quirk of the brand which is probably used to emphasize the unique niche which it caters to).

It also has the honor of being the only Indian brand to get shelf space in the foreign multi-beauty retail store, Sephora and the only Indian Ayurvedic brand to have the esteemed foreign beauty giant, Estee Lauder as an investor (1).

Looking at these incredulous achievements that have taken shape from the vision of a lone woman, one is automatically forced to look for a hidden secret. Perhaps the secret is Mira’s determination to use only the best of the ingredients and elevate Ayurveda from the position of an old, fuddy-duddy discipline to the heights of luxury and indulgence.

Image: Instagram @forestessentials

If you happen to walk into any Forest Essentials store, you would be captivated by the gold enameled, colorful visuals of the ingredients, which are reinforced by the exotic smells that always seem to waft into the air. The whole experience screams exotic indulgence, which is what Mira aspired for. Needless to say that by not bowing down to market trends and by having the courage to give shape to her unique vision (even if it meant going against the grain), Mira has grown her small venture to a global scale.

In the era of Jack Ma, Warren Buffet, stories like Mira’s give hope to women, who aspire to dream the business dream.

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