“What I have really rethought is this romantic idea that sincerity alone builds a brand. Sincerity gives the brand its soul, but clarity, communication, and resilience are what help that soul survive in the market.”
Founder of Indulgeo Essentials, Supriya Malik’s journey started from a deeply personal family experience. In a freewheeling chat with Times Today, Supriya shares that the idea to build Indulgeo first took shape when her mother developed alopecia after the loss of her father. The very same idea later gained a foothold when her daughter was diagnosed with glucose intolerance and began facing skin pigmentation issues.
Watching them deal with conditions that affected not just their appearance but also their confidence made Supriya see a gap that lacked gentle, comforting, and less clinical solutions. Looking back at those days, she reveals,
“My daughter was only a little child, and yet people were already asking questions about her face, about the marks on her skin. As a mother, that is a very painful thing to witness. You are not just dealing with the condition itself. You are also trying to protect your child from the cruel gaze of the world. And when the solutions available feel too intense, too clinical, or too harsh, you begin to question the skincare space.”
Eventually, Indulgeo was born to fill that space, with a focus on helping people. The vision is to become more than a skin care brand and serve a larger goal, as Supriya explains.
“Even the name reflects that emotion. ‘Indulgeo’ means to pamper, to care for, to soothe. And that has always been the soul of the brand. To make someone feel comforted. To make them feel seen. To help them return to themselves. So when I look at what I have built, it feels deeply powerful because it is not just a company to me. It feels like a continuation of what the women in my family have always done for one another: to care, to protect, to comfort, to heal. First, my mother did that for my daughter, and today, as a founder, I feel I can extend that same comfort to someone out there who may be silently struggling in the same way.”
The Guiding Force
Working with her mother, Seema Arora, Supriya found something rare that helped her with personal closeness and creative grounding. She describes her mother as her co-creator and inspiration, saying that working with her has brought back a relationship that often gets diluted by the demands of marriage, family, and daily life.
At Indulgeo Essentials, that very bond has become a part of the brand’s structure. She says,
“My mother has this quiet strength that brings patience into the team and into me. In moments where the market can make you restless, where trends can make you feel like you must keep chasing what is selling, what is viral, or what is next, she brings me back to center. She reminds me of why we began. She reminds me that this brand was never about building for the sake of building or about chasing numbers without meaning. It was always about creating comfort.”
Supriya further adds,
“We are also very conscious of keeping our roles distinct, because that gives our relationship clarity and respect. Her role is ideation, instinct, and emotional direction. My role is to take that vision and turn it into reality. She brings the heart; I build the structure around it.”
Today, for her, the journey has been as much about building a company as about carrying forward a generational sense of care, one she now hopes to pass on to her daughter as well.
The Journey
When Indulgeo began in 2016, the market was relatively small, quieter, and far less aggressive. She remembers that brands back then were not constantly chasing consumers through constant push marketing, and there was more room for trust and intention.
Indulgeo itself did not start with a roadmap or business plan. It was supposed to be a simple post in a Gurgaon Moms group, which eventually led to a brand offering natural blends to anyone looking for gentler solutions. The early responses, especially from expecting mothers and people with acne-prone skin, got the wheels in motion.
Looking at the skincare space now, the market is far more crowded and transactional. Competition is sharper, and brands are under constant pressure to sell, discount, and stay visible. The relationship between brands and consumers has also shifted. Amid all of this, several brands have lost their depth and truth. Back then, there was more patience and more respect for what a brand stood for. Now, the environment demands more from both sides, which makes trust harder to build and easier to lose.
Ayurveda and Science
Indulgeo’s USP is the combination of Ayurveda and science, rooted in honesty, not as a marketing angle but as a product philosophy. Ayurveda brings the intuition and generational wisdom around ingredients and care, while science brings testing, structure, and accountability. What sets the brand apart is that it is built from lived experience and a real need, with a constant focus on whether each product truly solves something meaningful rather than simply following what is fashionable. The result is skincare that is designed to feel trustworthy, thoughtful, and effective.
They have also introduced the Activs Range, moving beyond traditional botanical formulations into science-led skincare with ingredients like peptides, ceramides, and Coenzyme Q10. A key product in this shift was Zafferano Oil. She shares,
“A product like our Zafferano Oil really gave me that confidence. It was powered by Coenzyme Q10, but it also carried the richness of saffron oil in it. And when we saw the kind of anti-aging results that combination delivered, it made the marriage of science and Ayurveda feel incredibly powerful. It showed us that science did not have to replace Ayurveda, and Ayurveda did not have to remain limited to tradition alone. The soul of the brand was never tied to rejecting science but was always about creating care that is effective, comforting, and honest. And if science, when supported by Ayurveda, could help us do that better, then it was helping us evolve more meaningfully.”
The idea was to bring together Ayurveda and science in a way that was more effective and kept the brand gentle, effective, and rooted, much like Korean Skincare, which is innovation-led but also combines actives with natural extracts, ferments, and plant-based ingredients.
Supriya also talks about the positive and negative effects of ingredient literacy. She acknowledges that while there has been a positive shift in awareness, to some extent, the information out there is selective and incomplete.
“A lot of the knowledge being passed on is not always coming from the right people. Sometimes it is coming from voices that are only highlighting one or two ingredients because those ingredients are easy to market, but they are not helping consumers understand the formulation as a whole. That is where the confusion begins.”
She explains that while a consumer may feel they know enough about the ingredient names and trending actives, there are loopholes in packaging that can misguide the consumers.
“Brands may mention a percentage complex in a way that makes the consumer believe the hero ingredient itself is present at that same level, when in reality the actual active load may be much lower. So even a consumer who is trying to be informed can still be misled.”
Supriya says that when it comes to skincare, it’s not just one hero ingredient that does the job, but an entire ecosystem of formulas.
“It depends on what that ingredient is supported with, what antioxidants are around it, what penetration enhancers are helping it work better, what calming or barrier-supporting ingredients are balancing it, and how the entire structure has been built. That is not something most consumers fully understand yet, because those are deep formulation details.”
Swimming Against the Tide
One of the hardest challenges was resisting deep discounting when the entire market was moving in that direction. Around 2023–24, heavy discounts became the norm, and like many brands, Indulgeo was pulled into that cycle for a while.
Soon after, Supriya realised that if the business kept depending on discounts, it would lose its value. She highlights,
“So I made a very firm decision to step away from it. I started speaking openly against deep discounting, even though I knew there would be a cost to that decision. And there was. By then, many existing customers had already become used to buying only at heavy discounts, so when I pulled back, sales started dipping.”
She made the difficult decision to step away from that model, even though it led to a sharp drop in sales and a period of financial strain. For six to seven months, the pressure was intense, but she stayed with that discomfort because protecting the brand’s long-term integrity mattered more than short-term revenue.
Global Expansion
Supriya’s expansion plan for Indulgeo is global, but not in a way that dilutes the brand’s identity. She wants the brand to grow by staying rooted in Indian skin, Indian climate, Indian concerns, and Indian ingredients, and by taking that philosophy to the world with confidence.
For her, the goal is not to make Indulgeo more universal by making it less Indian but to show that Indian wisdom, when expressed with quality and conviction, can stand as premium in its own right. Supriya points out,
“For a long time, India was often seen as a sourcing point. A place where the world came looking for ingredients, for botanicals, for ancient knowledge. But the finished expression of luxury was often shaped elsewhere. I think what excites me is the possibility of changing that. To create a brand where the source and the sophistication come from the same place. Where India is not just behind the formula but fully present in the identity, the philosophy, and the aspiration. The ambition is global. But philosophically, it is about representation.”
Learning and Unlearning
When Supriya began her journey, she believed honesty, good formulation, and pure intention to be enough, only to find out that a brand also needs to learn how to communicate, stay visible, educate, and stay relevant. She further recalls,
“That was a big shift for me, because in the beginning, I almost wanted the product to speak entirely for itself. Today, I still believe the product must be the strongest voice, but I also understand that if you do not tell your story well, if you do not explain your thinking, if you do not build recall and connection, even a beautiful product can get lost.”
Over the years, Supriya has learned a lot in her journey. Reflecting on her journey, she asserts,
“If I had to rebuild Indulgeo today, I think the biggest difference would be that I would listen more before I launch more.”
The products at Indulgeo, as Supriya notes, come from Supriya’s own life, home, and her own concerts, but while she would still protect the honesty even today, she would reach out to even more people and understand their concerns before creating anything. She reflects,
“I would want to speak to as many people as I could and really understand their needs, their desires, their fears, and their frustrations with what the current market is still not solving for them. Then I would look at my own capabilities and ask myself where I can genuinely offer a solution. Even if I cannot meet every desire, can I at least meet a real need in a meaningful way?”
While there are several things Supriya could have done differently if she were to create everything from scratch again, what she would protect fiercely is the truth of the brand. As she signs off, she emphasises,
“I would still protect the fact that Indulgeo comes from care. I would still protect the need for formulations to feel gentle, thoughtful, and deeply human. I would still protect the belief that a product should not be launched without a real reason.”
