Mohit Goel, Founder and Director Vedic Cosmeceuticals

7 Jan 2023 , 04:07 PM

How did you come up with the idea of Vedic Cosmeceuticals?

I sensed immense growth potential in contract manufacturing as a full-scale service rather than a plain jane outsourcing business. While the potential was obvious, the initial challenges were significant in terms of developing know how, a potent formula bank, optimal production efficiencies in a small set up etc. but the family and key business affiliates believed in me, and steadily the business found its feet. In a matter of 3-4 years, Vedic has achieved sufficient scale for brands to recognize the key differentiators that Vedic offered.

Help us understand the business model of the company.

Vedic Cosmeceuticals has grown from being a contract manufacturer for a single brand in 2004 to 50+ leading Beauty brands in India and the international market in 2021. The company has grown almost 100% y-o-y, and its biggest strength has been to provide deep customized idea-to-shelf services, ranging from product ideation, in-depth R&D, packaging, and efficient manufacturing of products. 

The company’s factory, spread across 80,000 sq ft in Noida, is GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) and GLP (Good Lab Practices) certified and is FDA approved. Vedic provides end-to-end services, right from the inception of the product to delivery. From sourcing ingredients and specialized stable formulations, to dispatch of final product and planogramming, Vedic has created a sustained supply value chain for leading Indian and international brands over the past few years.

What makes your company unique?

Over the years, our innovation, agility and service consistency has helped us stand out in the industry. Our constant focus on innovation, clean beauty and a very strong R&D helped us sail through, even during the tough Covid times. We ensure quality in our products and our turnaround time is highly optimal. At a macro level, our idea-to-shelf model really facilitated accelerated go-to-market for our clients, and that’s why most of them have continued staying with us, since the beginning of our association. 

What are the key trends and opportunities in the personal care market in India? 

With the rise in awareness about various aspects of wellness and beauty amongst Indian customers, the spending, depth and width have increased exponentially. According to reports, the per capita spending on beauty and personal care products was around INR 450 per annum in 2017, which is expected to jump to almost double during the 2019-2024 period. We are personally experiencing that growth, looking at our manufacturing contracts. The beauty and wellness market in India was valued at INR 901.07 Bn in 2018 and is forecast to reach INR 2,463.49 Bn by 2024, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~18.40% during the 2019-2024 period.

While there is consistent growth across all the categories, there has been a huge demand in two categories- Men’s grooming and Intimate Care. A big boom has been seen, especially in the non-metro cities, and the quarterly growth in uptake is higher than the rest of the beauty industry’s growth. People are no more shying away from talking about and using intimate care products and this behavioural- and social – change is a huge contributing factor to the growth in the Intimate Care category. Growing awareness amongst men towards self-grooming has led to increased demand in the segment. That said, there is simultaneous development in traditionally best-selling categories like Skin and Hair. 

Share some insights into the associations with D2C brands. Are you launching your own labels?

We have no plans to launch our own labels, we are happy to manufacture for different brands, which has been our core for 18 years. 

Where will the company be 5 years from today?

In the next five years, we want to become the leading contract manufacturer for beauty and wellness brands, in national as well as international markets. We are already heading towards progress in a similar path, where top national/international brands have joined hands with us for their products. Our R&D team is highly skilled and diverse to create products for today’s Indian and even global consumers. Added to our high-end machinery, which makes the product manufacturing and preservation process absolutely safe; we are focused towards clean, ethical and responsible practices and secure processes at every stage. We believe that these practices will take us a long way in the future. 

We always focus on ethical practices, helping our clients with end-to-end processes, which in turn is helping the latter in reaching out to their consumers successfully. With the pace that Vedic is going, we will surely become the market leader in contract manufacturing in the years to come. 

Please share details of your latest fund raise. Are you looking to raise funds in 2023?

The last fundraised was Rs 25 crore in Series A round of capital, from Sixth Sense Ventures. The Capital raised has been invested into scaling up the business, building capacity and expanding operations. We are planning for the next round of fund raise, but we have not given ourselves any stipulated timelines on the same, looking at the market and current global economic scenario.