Since CEW Beauty News last spoke with Avya Skincare founders Deepika Vyas and Dr. Tanuj Nakra in 2021, the brand has seen significant sales growth on retail sites Amazon.com and Macys.com. Deepika and Tanuj contribute rapid expansion to factors such as pandemic-related skin care concerns and the rising popularity and awareness of Ayurveda-influenced beauty brands. CEW Beauty News revisited conversations with Deepika and Tanuj for an update on the brand’s latest product launches, retail expansion, and increased interest in Ayurvedic trends in the beauty and wellness space.

Ayurvedic-inspired skin care brand Avya Skincare is experiencing a boom thanks to what the brand’s founders are attributing to a rise in interest in Ayurvedic skin care brought on by the stressful events of the pandemic over the past two years.

Founded by aunt-and-nephew duo Deepika Vyas and Dr. Tanuj Nakra in 2018, the brand is heavily influenced by the concept of Ayurveda, which is defined as the traditional Hindu system of medicine, based on the idea of achieving bodily systems balance with diet, herbal treatments, and yogic breathing/meditation. One way Avya Skincare incorporates this concept is through its proprietary blend of neem, turmeric, and peony, ingredients commonly used in Ayurvedic medicine, in many of the product formulations.

As Deepika explained, “I would venture to guess that Covid had a big impact on [the rising interest] because it really gave people pause to think about what’s important in life. Finding a balance and starting to take care of not only their physical bodies, but their mind with meditation, which is also a part of Ayurveda, and really taking note of the ingredients they consume, not just food but on their skin. I honestly feel that Covid had a big part in Ayurveda coming into the limelight because it’s really about a way of having balance in your life. I think that really hit home to people when basically our world shut down for two years.”

The brand, which is privately owned and self-funded, recently launched three new products to appeal to a younger audience, complete with lower prices. There’s the Daily Detox Clay Mask ($28), formulated with camphor and salicylic acid to exfoliate the skin and calm facial inflammation and irritation; Daily Milk Cleanser ($28), formulated with Ayurvedic botanicals including ginger root, chamomile, sunflower, and safflower to calm dry, sensitive, and easily irritated skin; and Hydroveda Sheer Tinted Moisturizer SPF 40 ($38), available in two shades and designed to protect skin from UV rays, pollution, blue light, and other environmental stressors.

Lisa Yarnell, Chief Operating Officer of Avya Skincare, said, “Items range at least $20 less than the Hydroveda products that were originally launched because we’re looking to extend use to daily and we’re looking to extend the products to millennials who haven’t used Avya Skincare before.”

Avya is sold on the brand’s website, as well as Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and Macy’s.com (both online and in brick-and-mortar locations). Plans include expanding to the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Since launching in 2018, the brand has nearly quadrupled sales on Amazon.com and Macys.com.

As a triple board-certified facial cosmetic and oculoplastic surgeon, Tanuj pointed out that the pandemic also brought about heightened aesthetic concerns, such as maskne, and interest in looking better for video calls. Avya Skincare’s proprietary blend contains multiple anti-inflammatory properties that look to boost skin’s radiance and help control pores.

When asked about competition with the increasing number of Ayurvedic-inspired beauty brands on the market, including Fable & Mane and Karuna Skin, Tanuj said that Avya Skincare derived from a balanced combination of Southeast Asian and Western medical expertise and the founders’ combined knowledge in the fields of pharmacy, aesthetic surgery, and Ayurvedic medicine.

“Our brand is a merger between the perspective I come from as a facial surgeon and my co-founder Deepika, a pharmacist with an Ayurvedic background. When we first launched [Avya Skincare], it was her [Deepika’s] idea to come up with a brand that has this Ayurvedic background and the concept behind Ayurveda is to balance out inflammatory triggers that may be present in the skin. At the time the brand was launched, there weren’t really Ayurvedic skin care lines out there, so we were really the first to incorporate turmeric and other Ayurvedic botanicals into skin care. My perspective as a facial cosmetic surgeon with my own practice and medical spa, where I was very familiar with medical-grade skin care lines, was also to integrate the best of medical-grade ingredients… I think that’s what makes us unique, we bring the best of both the western world and the eastern world together into one skin care line,” Tanuj said.