India has a rich history of ayurveda and traditional therapies and the initial beauty industry was limited to either kitchen remedies or dadima ke nuske (grandma’s prescriptions) for all beauty woes. But with time, the laboratories made cosmetics and beauty products came into existence and later gave it a natural and herbal feel. As per analysts, the Ayurvedic market is estimated to be at Rs. 4,500 crores at present. The herbal products forms 6-7 percent of the overall personal care products market currently while the estimates are that it could grow to about 10 percent of the segment by FY 2020 as the trend accelerates. Thus, various players are rebooting their business strategies and investing in new products or making new acquisitions to reap in the benefit of the herbal age. Sanjali Giri maintains, “The world has woken up to natural beauty in a big way. Herbal/ ayurvedic/ organic are all different forms of natural beauty solutions which is rapidly growing and we can see increasing number of players entering the market in this space. At The Body Shop, we believe in naturally inspired products. This happens to be the specialty of the brand’s sourcing team, who understand everything about an ingredient – how it is grown, handled and processed. We use ingredients that are carefully selected for their high levels of purity and consumer safety.” Vivek Bali from Sephora, affirms, “The market is good and strong, people are aware and getting more of these products. Even multi-national brands are getting into organic space and are trying to acquire some ayurvedic brands for their portfolio expansion. Within Sephora, we have representation of one of India’s great ayurvedic brand like Forest Essentials. We also have Boscia which offer natural products.” While beauty products are showing a huge inclination towards natural ingredients, beauty salons too are offering herbal treatments and services to its customers. “At Lakmé Salon, innovation has been something that we have been very proud of. We bring trends from the back of Lakmé Fashion Week into our salon. About a fourth or a quarter of our revenue comes from innovation and as the consumers are showing a higher inclination towards organic or natural ingredients, we find these across our portfolio. So we have organic facials, we have recently launched a facial called ‘beauty sutra’ which are ritual based on traditional Indian beauty ingredients and it’s been a blockbuster. There is also an organic range in hair care or hair spa portfolio. At Lakmé, we have introduced a lot of products which have natural base and these are performing great for us,” asserts Pushkaraj Shenai.