The honest story of how aerah got here.

Behind aerah | Estimated read: 5 minutes

Nobody tells you that building a skincare brand means spending months arguing with a nozzle.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The spray mechanism on Sun Dewfence went through more iterations than we can count; too fine, too coarse, too uneven, too slow. Each version shipped from a vendor in China. Each version tested by hand. Each version sent back.
That’s the part of aerah that doesn’t make it onto the homepage. The part that happened before any of the beautiful things like the palette, the packaging, the formula, the copy. The part that was just two people in a room, refusing to settle.

Where it started

The frustration that became aerah didn’t arrive as a single moment. It built slowly, the way honest frustrations do.
We kept reaching for skincare that promised everything and delivered something less. Global brands formulated for climates that weren’t ours. Indian brands that leaned so hard into heritage that the science got buried. And everywhere we looked, beautiful packaging hiding sub-optimal percentages. Marketing that was louder than the formula behind it.
The question that wouldn’t leave us alone was simple: why is nobody making skincare that’s actually built for the life we live? For Indian skin, in Indian conditions, at percentages that actually work?
We looked for the answer for a long time. When we couldn’t find it, we decided to become it.

What we didn’t expect

We expected formulation to be hard. We didn’t expect it to be this hard.
Forty-plus iterations on a single product. Changing manufacturers mid-process because the output wasn’t good enough and we refused to compromise. Starting again. Testing again. Sending samples back with notes that got more specific each time, the texture isn’t right, the finish is too heavy, the percentage needs to go up, the stability isn’t there.
The manufacturers we eventually chose weren’t the first ones we worked with. They were the ones who understood what we were asking for. Finding them took time we hadn’t planned for.
The packaging took just as long. Designing it was one thing. Finding vendors who could execute it the way we’d imagined was another. The overall design direction changed twice before we arrived at something we were genuinely proud of. The nozzle for Sun Dewfence, something most people will use for two seconds without thinking about, was tested first hand more times than we’d like to admit. The spray pattern, the mist density, the distance required for even coverage. Every detail.
Working with Chinese vendors through a language barrier added its own layer. What got lost in translation sometimes wasn’t just words, it was intent. The precision we needed didn’t always survive the back and forth. We got there. It took longer than we expected.

What stayed constant through all of it

Through every iteration and every setback, two things never changed.
The first was the standard. Every aerah product had to work, formulated at the right percentages, with the right ingredients, explained honestly. If we couldn’t explain every ingredient in the formula, it didn’t go in. That rule never bent.
The second was the vision. Skincare built for Indian skin, for the Indian climate, for the modern Indian lifestyle. Not adapting a formula designed for someone else. Not leaning on heritage as a substitute for science. Something genuinely new.
Cassia Seed Extract in the moisturiser. Moringa Seed Extract in Always Active. Amla Extract in Sun Dewfence. Each Indian-sourced ingredient chosen because the evidence supports it, not because it tells a beautiful story. The story is a bonus. The science is the reason.

Why three products

People ask us why we launched with only three SKUs.
The honest answer is that three was already hard enough to do properly.
We could have launched with ten products. We could have filled the range with formulas that were good enough. We chose not to because good enough wasn’t the point. The point was to build something we could stake our names on, formula by formula.
Three SKUs. Each one the result of forty-plus iterations, one manufacturer change, and a refusal to ship anything we weren’t completely certain of. That’s how aerah starts. And it’s how every product that comes after will be built too.

What we want for you

We didn’t build aerah for a market. We built it because we genuinely believe Indian skin deserves better than what it’s been offered.
Better formulations. Better transparency. Better products built for the climate, lifestyle, and identity of the people actually using them.
If you’re reading this, you’re here at the beginning of something we’ve been building for a long time. We’re glad you’re here.
Thank you for trusting us with your skin.
— Muskaan & Shitanshu
Co-founders, aerah
For the era you’re in.