EXPANSION is definitely on our cards.”

Nitin Passi, Chairman and Managing Director, lotus Herbals, discusses with kanishka Ramchandani his plans for Lotus Professional and his vision for India’s beauty sector.

What are your plans for Lotus Professional for 2023?

The company’s professional division, Lotus Professional, currently serves 200 cities through 300+ distributors with world-class technical products, education, and services, reaching 15,000+ beauty salons and spas, making it India’s leading professional skincare brand.

We intend to expand our reach to 35,000 salons and spa doors within the next financial year focusing on market penetration in tier II and III cities, so that we cater to the heart of India. Lotus Professional has marked its debut in the Middle East and GCC countries catering to crème de la crème salons. Our global ambitions in 2023-24 shall revolve around reaching out to more than 32 countries through our global business associates.

We have already launched India’s largest Beauticians Club – ‘I’M LP Club,’ which has enrolled 20,000+ beauticians. We are launching an exclusive app for this club, which is revolutionary and aims to cater to one lakh+ beauticians within the next two years.

What kind of changes are you seeing in customer behaviour when it comes to professional skincare?

In recent times, there has been a significant rise in the usage of big data in the beauty industry collated through questionnaires, search term data, and user buying and spending habits. The same can be seen being implemented in the professional industry. The insights from these are a revelation as 60-70 per cent of the clients are now willing to spend on brands if they were offering natural products.

The Indian market has seen a growing interest in conscious consumerism and non-toxic beauty brands that prioritise the environment over profit. While consumers are harmonising with nature, they are also looking at maximising efficacy through science to alleviate their specific skin/hair concerns. There’s also a growing interest in plant-based dermaceuticals, AR, VR tech mirrors, and other tools for facials. We’ve also witnessed a growing affinity toward ayurveda-based skin, body and hair treatments blurring the lines between salons and spas.

What parameters do you look for in your salon partners?

Ever since the launch of Lotus Professional, our motto has been mutual growth, industry leadership and business pursuits that transcend short-term goals. Our vision has always been non-myopic, and we strongly believe in growing the industry too. Our parameters are both qualitative and quantitative. Honesty, transparency, safety, and hygiene are our topmost priorities.

What efforts are you taking in making your professional product line more eco-friendly?

Lotus Professional has been synonymous with green, clean, ethical and sustainable beauty ever since its inception. Our sustainability efforts extend in 3’Ps.

• Product: Our products are created with eco-friendly plant-based ingredients so that they don’t end up contaminating water and polluting landfills.

• Production: Our manufacturing plant is a LEED Platinum-certified Green Building where our production facility has energy conservation, biodiversity, water conservation and harvesting and energy-saving efficient systems along with efficacious waste management.

• Packaging: All our packaging is recyclable and our paper cartons are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified. We use glass jars and bottles wherever possible to lower the environmental impact and carbon footprints required to recycle the material.

With our advanced technology, we are aiming to explore biodegradable packaging shortly.

What is your marketing strategy and expansion plans for the professional category, both in India and abroad?

Our marketing strategy is highly consumer and business-associate-centric, which is bifurcated with excellent quality and innovative products through campaigns and technical education.

We intend to leverage our education support strategically and establish brand loyalty through our unique brand ambassadors - the beauticians. We also believe in the hyper-personalisation of our marketing messages and let data drive our creative and analytical inputs for reach and impact. We intend to expand into new categories with hair and body care products. You will also see us soon with our state-of-the-art Lotus Academy for technical education.

Lotus Herbals has in the recent past acquired quite a few businesses across segments of ayurvedic beauty, dermaceuticals and nutraceuticals. What is the scope of these brands and their respective categories?

Post the onset of the pandemic, Lotus Herbals has made strategic investments in emerging beauty brands over the past couple of years with the 100 per cent acquisition of the luxury ayurveda brand SoulTree in September 2020, followed by a 32 per cent stake buy in the Dermaceutical Company Fix Derma India in October 2021. In 2022, Lotus invested in many promising brands including new age D2C clean beauty brand Conscious Chemist; French luxury skincare brand Lili Margo Paris; Vanity Wagon, India’s largest e-commerce platform for clean beauty; and Better Beauty, a luxurious, sustainable and honestly crafted skincare brand. The recent acquisition of a 20 per cent stake in researchbased nutraceuticals start-up Yogic Secrets solidified the brand’s global vision of a holistic beauty and wellness leader in India.

SoulTree

The ayurveda market in India was valued at ₹300 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach ₹710.87 billion by 2024, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.06 percent. The ayurveda market also saw mammoth growth post-pandemic with a spurting 50-90 per cent boost because people started believing in mindful choices for organic, therapeutic and slow beauty with care for the environment.

Fixderma and FCL With our strategic planning and marketing expertise, we aim to enhance the global footprint for Fixderma and FCL and capture significant market share within the next five years as part of our long-term growth strategy.

Conscious Chemist Our investment in Conscious Chemist aligns with our strategy for accelerating growth in the DTC digital native universe focused on clean beauty. The brand will also help us understand closely the aspirations and needs of the millennial and Gen-Z shopper cohorts.

Yogic Secrets The growth in the herbal segment is exponential and shall contribute to about 30 per cent of the nutraceutical supplements market in India in the coming future.

Do you have more acquisitions on the cards this year? These are interesting times for the beauty industry. The Indian cosmetics products market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 7 per cent during 2020-2025. What is exciting for us are several new niche categories sprouting in the beauty industry, some of which can be scalable in the foreseeable future. We have drawn a strategy of either owning such businesses or partnering with passionate founders who need mentoring and access apart from capital to realise their ambitions. There are many developments for the group for the year 2023. Currently, it looks promising and expansion is definitely on our cards.