Argan oil to restore shine, clay-based shampoo for oily roots, tea tree oil to control drandruff and Moroccan oil to smoothen the ends. When it comes to shampoos, customers are spoilt for choice.
“But hair issues are never just one problem. It always is a combination of two or more,” says Mohit Yadav, co-founder, Freewill — a custom-made haircare range. His company, like competitors Bare Anatomy and Vedix among others, has forayed into the business of personalising shampoos.
Curated to fit
For Bare Anatomy, it started with Rohit Chawla, the firm’s co-founder, setting up an R&D lab in late 2018. The intent was to create a system which would collate information about the customer’s hair with the help of a questionnaire. The results would allow them to alter ingredients of the haircare product to suit the individual’s hair requirements.
The questionnaire ask for details like the structure of hair, texture and density. It also records problems like dandruff, hair fall and split ends, and inquires about the customer’s haircare practices — how often they wash their hair, treatments undertaken etc. The shampoo can also be altered to suit the climatic condition of the location the user is based in.
“The more questions answered, the better chances of the algorithm accurately combining the ingredients,” adds Mohit. At Freewill, at least 80,000 such questionnaires have been answered so far, he adds.
How well does it work? At Freewill, Mohit claims that a 42% increment on algorithm success was observed in the last seven months.
But founders of Vedix, a Hyderabad-based firm offering solutions based on Ayurveda, go about this process differently. Chaitanya Nallan, CEO, Vedix, says the Vedix questionnaire aims to chart the customer’s three doshas (namely vata , pitta and kapha ) which is believed to have an impact on the quality of their hair. The answers help develop a map of the doshas and, subseqeuntly, link the profile to specific ayurvedic ingredients that will be used to make the products. “Personalisation of haircare is the way ahead,” adds Mohit.
While his firm plans to venture into skincare as well, Vedix, adds Chaitanya, will be launching its own line of ingestible supplements to their product range.
Since these products are tailor-made, mass production for profits is not possible immediately. But as Sifat Khurrana, Freewill’s founder-partner, says, “The very ethos of personalisation goes against the concept of mass production. There will be mass-personalisation though.”
