Allyv founder and CEO Surabhi Sundarka on simplifying skincare through multifunctional products, texture-led innovation and affordable formulations, while building an online-first personal care brand with ambitions to expand into offline retail and international markets
India’s beauty market is crowded with brands competing for consumer attention through ingredient-led formulations, elaborate skincare routines and increasingly sophisticated packaging. Allyv, founded by Surabhi Sundarka, is taking a different approach: simplifying personal care through multifunctional products that combine performance, convenience and sensorial experiences at accessible price points.
Drawing on her experience in finance, investments and the beauty startup ecosystem, Sundarka is building Allyv around the needs of young consumers who want effective skincare without complicated routines. In conversation with BW Retail World, the founder and CEO Surabhi Sundarka discusses the thinking behind the brand, its focus on texture innovation, the challenges of scaling a bootstrapped business and her ambition to build a Rs 500 crore brand over the next five years.
What consumer insight or market gap led to the creation of Allyv? How did your personal journey shape the brand’s proposition?
I spent most of my career in finance. I am a chartered accountant, have completed my company secretary qualification and hold an MBA from London. My last corporate role was with Amazon India’s venture capital and investing team, where I evaluated beauty and fashion startups selling on the platform.
This gave me considerable exposure to India’s beauty landscape, particularly during 2021–23, when the sector was gaining momentum and several brands were emerging to serve Indian consumers. I interacted with more than 100 beauty brand founders, spoke to consumers, analysed marketplace data and explored markets such as South Korea and China to understand how international brands were approaching their customers.
This experience helped me understand both the consumer-facing and operational sides of the beauty business. Being a founder is not all glamour; you need to understand everything from product development to supply chains.
By 2024, I felt that the beauty market had become extremely cluttered. There were too many brands, choices, voices and trends, and everyone seemed to be complicating skincare routines for a 22-year-old woman.
I wanted to simplify that experience. Why should consumers buy several products when one well-formulated product could perform multiple functions? Our idea was to create high-performance, multifunctional products without compromising on efficacy or the user experience.
That is why Allyv is positioned as an affordable brand for women in their early 20s. We use scientific and natural actives to develop potent formulations, with an emphasis on innovative textures and sensorial experiences that make everyday personal care simpler and more enjoyable.
Consumers are increasingly discerning, with numerous brands competing for their attention. What differentiates Allyv, and what is the core value proposition you want consumers to associate with the brand?
We want Allyv to be known for three things: saving time, delivering high performance and offering an enjoyable experience at an affordable price. Our products are priced at around Rs 500–700, including larger pack sizes.
Most beauty brands focus on ingredient-led storytelling, highlighting ingredients such as niacinamide. We wanted to take that a step further by innovating on textures and sensorial experiences.
Traditionally, sensorial beauty products have been associated with pleasant fragrances. We have gone beyond that to create innovative textures that transform during use.
For example, our face wash is designed to transform through different stages. When applied to dry skin, it foams into a bubble pack within 10 seconds. Consumers can then use the small beads for gentle exfoliation. On contact with water, the product transforms into a milky cleanser.
Typically, consumers use separate products for cleansing, exfoliation and face packs. We wanted to bring multiple functions together in one bottle, giving consumers the benefits of several products without requiring them to follow an elaborate routine.
We also work with partner laboratories in India because they understand our skin, climate, humidity and melanin-rich skin better. Product development needs to account for the conditions Indian consumers experience.
For instance, a brightening body wash should also provide sufficient moisturisation, particularly for someone living in a hot and humid city such as Lucknow or Mumbai, where applying lotion afterwards may not always be convenient. We consider factors such as moisturisation, fragrance longevity across different weather conditions, tanning and the concentration of actives required.
Finally, we do not want to build a brand that makes women feel insecure about their appearance. We want our formulations to do the hard work while consumers enjoy a simple, effective experience that helps them look and feel their best.
How does this approach reflect the way young consumers actually use skincare products?
Before launching Allyv, I conducted a survey that organically reached more than 200 people through WhatsApp groups. Around 67 per cent of the women surveyed said they used three or fewer products on their faces each day, typically a cleanser, moisturiser and sometimes sunscreen.
That reinforced our belief that consumers do not necessarily want complicated routines. A beauty brand can have 40–50 stock-keeping units in its portfolio, but the real question is whether its products fit into a consumer’s everyday life.
For us, the priorities are high performance, time-saving formulations and an enjoyable experience. A young woman in her early 20s may be starting her first job, moving to a new city, building her career and trying to balance exercise, nutrition and hydration. Spending half an hour on skincare in the morning and another half an hour at night may not be practical.
We want to create products that fit naturally into her routine rather than add another set of demands to her day.
As founder and CEO, how are you balancing brand building with the business fundamentals of scaling, product development, distribution, customer acquisition and profitability?
My background in finance and business gives me a distinct perspective. I spent nearly a decade analysing businesses and making investments, so I have never been able to separate brand building from business fundamental.
Building brand love without a sustainable business model can become a vanity project. Equally, strong business fundamentals without a compelling brand will not create something enduring
At Allyv, we want consumers to connect with and genuinely enjoy the brand, but building a repeat-purchase business is equally important.
In the initial phase, we have concentrated on formulation, innovation and quality. We actively seek customer feedback, including through calls with customers, and use those insights to improve subsequent batches.
We are primarily a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand and are also available on Amazon. We are working towards expanding to other marketplaces and quick-commerce platforms, while exploring an offline retail presence.
Customer acquisition and profitability must go hand in hand. Each of our products has a separate profit-and-loss account, and I closely track margins, customer acquisition cost, unit economics and repeat purchases.
In a crowded industry, acquiring customers can be expensive, particularly for a young brand. However, if consumers genuinely enjoy the products, repeat orders can help build a more sustainable business. Our repeat-order performance has been encouraging, and we believe this will support our path towards profitability in the coming months.
What have been the biggest challenges in building Allyv, and what have they taught you about consumers, the beauty category and entrepreneurship?
One of our biggest challenges has been pursuing genuine innovation. It sounds glamorous to create something for the first time, but it is difficult to translate an idea into a commercially viable product.
We believe every product and texture should offer something new or valuable to consumers. Otherwise, there is little reason to introduce another product into an already crowded market.
Finding the right research and development partners, manufacturers and ingredient suppliers has been challenging. Some of the ingredients needed for our texture innovations, such as a formulation that transforms into a bubble pack within 10 seconds, are not readily available in India. We have had to explore international sourcing and work closely with partners to bring our ideas to life.
The second challenge is customer acquisition. As a young, bootstrapped brand, attracting attention is expensive. Converting that attention into purchases and then building customer retention requires sustained effort. We are continuing to strengthen each stage of that process.
The third challenge has been identifying the right content creators to communicate our brand story. With so many people creating content, finding those who genuinely align with the brand and can convey its proposition effectively is not straightforward. The process often involves considerable manual work, from identifying creators to coordinating content and ensuring that it resonates with our positioning.
Entrepreneurship has also required a significant personal adjustment. I previously worked with large organisations, including Grant Thornton, EY, Amazon and an investment bank in London. I was accustomed to a corporate environment where much of my work involved analysis and spreadsheets.
Running a business means being involved in everything, from packing orders and finding vendors for paper bags and PR boxes to presenting the brand to investors, customers and journalists. Every audience requires a different approach.
I was not fully prepared for the number of roles I would have to take on, but the experience has been extremely exciting and has taught me something new at every stage.
What is your vision for Allyv over the next three to five years? What would success look like in terms of scale, market presence and consumer impact?
Our ambition is to become one of India’s most loved personal care brands over the next five years, with a target of building a Rs 500 crore brand during that period.
We want to achieve this through organic customer love and community building, with consumers who genuinely enjoy our products and recommend them to others.
Our immediate focus is to remain online-first, strengthening our D2C channel while expanding across marketplaces and quick commerce. After around three years, we would like to explore offline distribution more actively.
We are currently focused on skincare and body care, but we see opportunities in adjacent categories such as fragrances that complement bath and body routines. We would like to explore these categories over the next few years.
Ultimately, I want Allyv to be a brand made in India with a global reach. That is a longer-term ambition for years four and five. For now, our priority is to build genuine customer relationships through organic engagement, community initiatives and events, and become a go-to brand for young consumers across the country.
Allyv’s packaging is minimalistic and functional, yet visually appealing. How did you arrive at this design philosophy in a market where brands increasingly experiment with elaborate packaging?
Keeping the packaging simple was actually one of our more difficult decisions. When I started speaking to packaging vendors, they showed us some incredibly elaborate designs, including products with mechanisms that dispense moisturiser in the shape of a flower.
But I realised that complicated packaging would contradict our central proposition of simplifying personal care routines. If we promise consumers that they can complete their routine in five minutes, they should not have to spend 30 seconds figuring out how to open or dispense a product.
We wanted packaging that was intuitive, ergonomic and easy to use. It had to fit comfortably in the hand and provide a good grip, even in the shower when hands are wet.
We also considered practical details such as dispensing mechanisms. A pump may not always be convenient when your hands are wet, while products with pumps may require stoppers to prevent leakage during travel.
We initially explored more complicated options but gradually returned to a simpler design. We also conducted consumer testing before making the final decision.
Before each product launch, we typically bring together 30–40 women from our network for blind testing. They evaluate our formulations alongside products from other brands without knowing which brand they are using, and then rank and score them.
We applied a similar process to packaging by presenting consumers with different samples. Ultimately, they preferred the bottle that was functional and easy to use every day, rather than the more elaborate alternatives.
That is how we arrived at our current packaging philosophy: we experiment with colours while keeping the design simple, practical and intuitive. For us, functionality must always support the overall consumer experience.
