Aahan Chatterjee Independence Week Featu

The Hand Cream

Five years from now, what would make you feel that Indian beauty has arrived globally? What needs to change — from founders, consumers or the industry itself — to get there?

I think the one thing that would put India on the global beauty map would be to reduce our reliance on instant gratification. Hair regrowth in 14 days, acne disappearing in 48 hours — so many products in the market today are bound by time and the promise of quick results. Your skin and hair are a byproduct of your lifestyle and encouraging a more holistic way of living, in addition to creating great products, is what will get us more recognition globally. I also think that we will truly arrive on the global stage when we are comfortable letting brands survive the slower run and build with intention. To this day, building a brand with intention in India immediately slots you in the category of a niche brand, because the Indian market has always been about volume. We need to start celebrating brands and products that are made with intricacy and stop undervaluing them only because they are made by hand.

When someone picks up a Project Qaafi product for the first time, what do you want them to understand about India?

I want to break the perception that value in India can only mean in terms of price or efficacy. To me, a thing of value is also one that is comforting to the customer in some sense. Maybe the scent of our hand cream helps calm them down after a long day or the practice of applying the cream allows them to feel like they are taken care of in the moment. So when someone picks up one of our products for the first time, I want them to understand that something as functional as skincare can be built with nuance, transparency, a slight cockiness even. I want Qaafi to stand neck-to-neck with any other globally known brand and for our customers to feel proud of owning an Indian brand that is capable of doing that.

Project Qaafi might be less than two years old, but founder Aahan Chatterjee speaks with the intelligence and clarity of a much more experienced founder. Design-first, intentionally created and with wellness incorporated every step of the way, more below on Chatterjee’s plans to build an India-first luxury brand with global ambitions, why he wants beauty to move beyond instant gratification and how he imagines the future of Indian beauty.

Many Indian brands have looked outward for inspiration, whether it is in aesthetics, formulations or even validation. What does building in India mean to you and how has that shaped Project Qaafi's identity?

I don't think there is anything wrong with looking outward for inspiration. I think doing that allows you to understand a lot about what not to do, and that is a learning in itself. To me, building in India for the world means you need to have a clear sense of what the world is looking for, what it perceives India as, and what Indians perceive the world as. As a founder, this overlap has been crucial — it's helped me identify the white space no one is building in. For so long, the Indian beauty industry has been perceived as either the land of Ayurveda, or a market where any new brand is treated as the Indian version of a concept that is already popular globally. Building in India for the world also means getting a clear understanding of the Indians in the diaspora, who are becoming increasingly in touch with their culture, whether through more frequent travel or consuming entertainment across genres, and of Indian consumers, who are no longer settling; across every touchpoint, they demand the very best. We want the same experience that we would get at a retail store outside the country, but in a way that is made for us and mindful of who we are.

Project Qaafi is built for this gap. Wellness is built into the foundation of the brand. We incorporate it into every aspect of the experience — from the way we greet our customers, to how our products leave them feeling. A lot of what makes up the Indian beauty industry today is functional: a cleanser for this, a moisturizer for that. And while many would argue that this is the goal, I think that ends up creating brands that sell products, not those that survive in the long run.

The brand feels intentionally designed, from its visual language to the way it tells stories. How do you decide which parts of the culture are worth carrying forward and which you're comfortable leaving behind?

Instead of asking ourselves which parts we want to celebrate versus those we are comfortable leaving behind, we ask ourselves this: how do you portray culture in a way that it is not reductive and still celebrates the beauty of the land? For so long, design was seen simply as a means to an end. At Project Qaafi, it is everything. When we began designing the visual language of the brand, a problem that we were trying to tackle was how we could get our consumers to stop looking at what has been done in the past with a perspective that is rooted in the past. We wanted them to start looking at it as what it could be and understand it through a modern lens.

When someone picks up a Project Qaafi product for the first time, what do you want them to understand about India?

I want to break the perception that value in India can only mean in terms of price or efficacy. To me, a thing of value is also one that is comforting to the customer in some sense. Maybe the scent of our hand cream helps calm them down after a long day or the practice of applying the cream allows them to feel like they are taken care of in the moment. So when someone picks up one of our products for the first time, I want them to understand that something as functional as skincare can be built with nuance, transparency, a slight cockiness even. I want Qaafi to stand neck-to-neck with any other globally known brand and for our customers to feel proud of owning an Indian brand that is capable of doing that.

As a founder, do you think that the biggest challenge today is creating a great product, or changing the perception that a great product can come from India? How have you navigated that tension?

I don't think the problem is creating a great product — I think the problem is to create one in India. The supply chain is complicated; building a product in the beauty space in India comes with its own set of operational challenges. We still have to look outwards for something as simple as packaging; for example, while we were able to produce our aluminium tubes in India, we couldn't go with a cap that luxury brands across the world use. Building in India also means that you have to break pre-conceived notions that Indian consumers hold about what a product made in India can mean. We are accustomed to looking to the West for so long when it comes to standards on what quality and efficacy could mean, but today, so many Indian brands across the board are getting it right and redefining what an Indian brand has to offer.

Five years from now, what would make you feel that Indian beauty has arrived globally? What needs to change — from founders, consumers or the industry itself — to get there?

I think the one thing that would put India on the global beauty map would be to reduce our reliance on instant gratification. Hair regrowth in 14 days, acne disappearing in 48 hours — so many products in the market today are bound by time and the promise of quick results. Your skin and hair are a byproduct of your lifestyle and encouraging a more holistic way of living, in addition to creating great products, is what will get us more recognition globally. I also think that we will truly arrive on the global stage when we are comfortable letting brands survive the slower run and build with intention. To this day, building a brand with intention in India immediately slots you in the category of a niche brand, because the Indian market has always been about volume. We need to start celebrating brands and products that are made with intricacy and stop undervaluing them only because they are made by hand.

What does creative freedom look like to you as a founder and how do you protect it while building a business?

To me, creative freedom is trusting people to follow their gut instincts, because a lot of what you want to do as a brand (especially one that prioritizes design the way we do) won't make sense on paper, but it still matters if the idea moves even one person and aligns them with who we are and what we do. There is a fine line that we are always walking between commercial scale and creative freedom and the way I have learnt to navigate that is to define expectations and work within them. You also have to trust people and acknowledge that as a founder, you will not always know everything. Respecting our creative partners and their vision is important to me and to the brand, because ultimately they are the ones building it out.

"When someone picks up one of our products for the first time, I want them to understand that something as functional as skincare can be built with nuance, transparency, a slight cockiness even. I want Qaafi to stand neck-to-neck with any other globally known brand and for our customers to feel proud of owning an Indian brand that is capable of doing that."

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Many Indian brands have looked outward for inspiration, whether it is in aesthetics, formulations or even validation. What does building in India mean to you and how has that shaped Project Qaafi's identity?

I don't think there is anything wrong with looking outward for inspiration. I think doing that allows you to understand a lot about what not to do, and that is a learning in itself. To me, building in India for the world means you need to have a clear sense of what the world is looking for, what it perceives India as, and what Indians perceive the world as. As a founder, this overlap has been crucial — it's helped me identify the white space no one is building in. For so long, the Indian beauty industry has been perceived as either the land of Ayurveda, or a market where any new brand is treated as the Indian version of a concept that is already popular globally. Building in India for the world also means getting a clear understanding of the Indians in the diaspora, who are becoming increasingly in touch with their culture, whether through more frequent travel or consuming entertainment across genres, and of Indian consumers, who are no longer settling; across every touchpoint, they demand the very best. We want the same experience that we would get at a retail store outside the country, but in a way that is made for us and mindful of who we are.

Project Qaafi is built for this gap. Wellness is built into the foundation of the brand. We incorporate it into every aspect of the experience — from the way we greet our customers, to how our products leave them feeling. A lot of what makes up the Indian beauty industry today is functional: a cleanser for this, a moisturizer for that. And while many would argue that this is the goal, I think that ends up creating brands that sell products, not those that survive in the long run.

The Hand Cream

TUACHA

Aahan Chatterjee on Building a Design-First Beauty Brand With Integrity And What He Imagines For The Future of Indian Beauty