In March, global beauty brand Estée Lauder announced that it had agreed to acquire the remaining interest in Forest Essentials, extending a relationship that began with a minority investment in 2008. If there was a twinge at seeing a homegrown luxury brand move towards global ownership, it was accompanied by recognition of how ingredients and practices familiar to Indian households had translated into an international luxury proposition. The trajectory is familiar. In 2022, Puig, the Spanish family-owned beauty and fashion company, acquired a majority stake in Kama Ayurveda, another leading Indian Ayurvedic brand.
The Atlas of Affluence 2026: The Rise of Indian Luxury, published by The Voice of Fashion (VoF), finds that Indian luxury is strongest when anchored in heritage, artisanal skill, ingredients, lineage, ritual and philosophy. At the same time, consumers want quality, authenticity and increasingly, global benchmarks. VoF’s surveys also reveal that 60% of respondents feel that Indian beauty brands fall short in packaging and aesthetics compared to global beauty brands and 22% say combining Ayurveda with scientific research will be the future differentiator. The potential complementarity is apparent – the Indian brand may bring heritage, ingredients, ritual and an established cultural vocabulary, whereas the global beauty house may bring scale, distribution, scientific capability and operational expertise.
Yet there is a paradox at the heart of luxury Ayurveda. Much of what gives it value – time-tested formulations and natural ingredients – is in the public domain. This article examines how IP helps carve out what can be owned, and convert it into assets that can be identified, protected, scaled and ultimately valued.
Brand as an asset
The most visible layer is the trademark. ‘Forest Essentials’ and the expression ‘Luxurious Ayurveda’, both registered trademarks in India, serve to distinguish a particular brand of Ayurvedic beauty in an increasingly crowded field. However, a trademark made of ordinary words, though easy to recall for consumers, can be hard to protect. In 2023, Forest Essentials sued Baby Forest Ayurveda, a younger company selling Ayurvedic baby care under the mark ‘BABY FOREST’. Despite annual sales of more than $45m and more than 150 stores, Forest Essentials was refused an interim injunction by the Delhi High Court in February 2026. The court held that the mark had to be read as a whole and that ‘forest’ is a dictionary word. It also found that a rival selling Ayurvedic products made from forest ingredients could plausibly have chosen the word honestly.
Even so, a brand is more than simply its name or logo – substantial value can rest in its visual aesthetic. Every Forest Essentials store, for instance, bears the signature fragrance of the brand, with staff helpfully explaining Ayurvedic rituals, and the same scent lingering on the luxe packaging one takes home. Kama Ayurveda stores, meanwhile, were designed by Jaipur-based Dutch designer Marie-Anne Oudejans and stand out for their use of wicker, brass and hand-painted murals of palm trees and elephants in a bold red colour. You recognise the brands before you read the signs.
Indian law protects visual identity. Store layouts may be registered as trademarks – the layout of Mary Cohr beauty salons, for example, is protected in India. The look and feel of a retail environment may also be protected. In Lenskart Solutions Pvt. Ltd. v. Chetan Govind Vhand, decided in August 2025, Lenskart, a leading eyewear retailer, complained that a competing eyewear outlet had reproduced not merely its logo but important elements of the appearance of its stores. It also highlighted that unsuspecting consumers on Reddit were sharing posts expressing actual confusion. Photographs placed before the court showed similarities in signage, displays and interior presentation. Finding a prima facie case in Lenskart’s favour, the defendant was restrained. In fact, distinctive colour schemes, product packaging and overall get-up have long been capable of protection as trade dress, with or without registration (under the principles of passing off). Of course, design registration may also be utilised to secure novel packaging and original artwork can qualify for copyright protection.
The value of a mark lies not merely in preventing another trader from using the same or a deceptively similar name but also in the layers of immersive, sensorial experience accumulated around it. Goodwill built through stores, staff, ritual and community is real and can support a passing-off action, but it lives in consumers’ experience, not on a register. In an acquisition, this fact must be acknowledged and efforts made to preserve not just the trademark but everything it has come to mean to consumers. Mira Kulkarni, founder and managing director of Forest Essentials, stresses this point in the March press release: “For me, what has always set the Estée Lauder companies apart is their profound respect for a founder’s vision; they understand how to preserve a brand’s soul while providing the global expertise needed to scale.”
Luxury rests on provenance
But was it glitzy branding that brought me back to soapnut? The key factor really was a shifting social narrative favouring natural ingredients over synthetic formulations, and modern Ayurvedic brands make a study of their formulations and ingredients easy. Their products are, in many cases, contemporary iterations of traditions extending back several millennia and the pull of provenance is powerful.
Legally speaking, where a product possesses a quality, reputation or other characteristic essentially attributable to its geographical origin, it may qualify for protection as a geographical indication (GI), which is a community-based right.
Kashmir saffron, for example, is a registered GI in India. Cultivated in a designated geographical region, it is prized for its high concentration of active chemical compounds that have considerable appeal as an ingredient in premium skincare. This matters in a market saturated with language such as ‘Himalayan’, ‘locally sourced’ and ‘wild harvested’. This language is evocative, but provenance becomes considerably more valuable when it can also be substantiated. A GI provides a legally recognised link between a product and its place of origin, and can therefore strengthen the authenticity narrative surrounding an ingredient used by a luxury brand.
That does not mean every botanical ingredient needs, or qualifies for, GI protection. Rather, GIs form part of a wider infrastructure of authenticity that may include certified suppliers, contractual sourcing requirements, traceability systems and other mechanisms capable of connecting the story told on the bottle with the origin of what is inside it. For instance, Kama Ayurveda holds the ‘Butterfly Mark’ by Positive Luxury – a sustainability certification for luxury brands awarded to prove they meet requirements across environmental, social and governance (ESG). It also possesses Ecocert’s ‘Cosmos’ certification indicating ingredients of natural origin. These independent credentials may not create IP rights, but they reinforce the credibility of claims through which a luxury brand differentiates itself.
Is Ayurveda traditional knowledge?
It would be fair to wonder that if I used homemade soapnut shampoo years ago, why did I not simply resume that same ritual? Understanding the nature of modern Ayurveda is helpful in this regard.
Ayurveda derives from the Sanskrit words ‘Ayur’, which means life, and ‘Veda’, which refers to knowledge of the ancient Indian texts. It is recognised as an indigenous system of medicine, with a history of 5,000 years, which includes both medicinal products and health services. Though Ayurvedic products today continue to be rooted in the classical texts, one way to establish a competitive edge over rivals is to tweak formulations to enhance certain characteristics. One desirable attribute could be extended shelf life.
A traditional Ayurvedic formula is in the public domain, but an inventive formulation or manufacturing process may qualify for patent protection, provided it satisfies the requirements of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, and avoids statutory exclusions. Under the Patents Act, 1970, any invention that is, in effect, traditional knowledge or a duplication of known properties of traditionally known components has been made non-patentable (Section 3(p)). The 2025 ‘Guidelines for Examination of Ayush Related Inventions’ are also pertinent in this regard (Ayush constitutes traditional and non-conventional systems of healthcare and healing including Ayurveda).
Furthermore, India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), established in 2001, documents formulations and practices drawn from ancient Indian texts and makes them accessible to patent examiners in a searchable, scientifically classified format. The initiative arose partly from controversies involving patents on the traditional uses of turmeric and neem – in 1995 a patent concerning the wound healing properties of turmeric was granted in the US and later revoked after evidence showed that the use had long been known in India. Today, the TKDL contains more than 520,000 formulations and practices and has helped prevent or challenge hundreds of patent applications internationally.
Patent protection, it must be noted, also involves disclosure of the invention to the public. For luxury Ayurveda brands, where competitive advantage lies in a particular formulation, say their signature scent, or manufacturing technique, maintaining secrecy is sometimes more valuable.
Secrecy is the way to go
Secrecy is not new to Ayurveda. In the olden days, Ayurvedic formulations were sometimes engraved on palm leaves which were accessible only to a few family members to keep information within the family.
An interesting study published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Rights in November 2024 (Trade Secret Protection in Ayurveda: Examining the Need for a Legislation), examined practices among 10 Ayurvedic manufacturers in Kerala and found that akin to those closely guarded palm leaves, some manufacturers assigned codes to raw materials, rather than identifying them by name, and restricted knowledge of the actual ingredients and their proportions to a handful of employees. The study also found that even where ingredients were disclosed on product labels, the precise proportions and methods of preparation could remain secret – replication of a formulation through reverse engineering was not necessarily easy or inexpensive. Further, manufacturers often relied on trust rather than formal confidentiality agreements, and instances of employees leaving to establish competing businesses rarely resulted in legal action.
For luxury Ayurveda brands, secrecy can offer an enduring means of protecting valuable know-how. India, however, does not have a standalone trade secret statute, though the Law Commission of India proposed a draft ‘Protection of Trade Secrets Bill, 2024’ in March 2024. Currently, protection is built through contractual obligations, confidentiality principles and judicial remedies. This is relevant for businesses moving from founder-led operations into a global corporate structure. As R&D teams, sourcing functions and manufacturing information travel across a larger organisation, confidential know-how ought to be identified and governed as such.
An interesting Delhi High Court decision illustrates the point beyond formulations themselves. In Transformative Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd. v. Pawajot Kaur Baweja (2023), involving an Ayurveda business, former employees were accused of misusing customer information and other proprietary material to operate a competing business. The plaintiffs did not merely describe their customer database as confidential. They explained in detail how it had been built: through substantial advertising expenditure, statistical analysis, identification of target audiences, tailored advertising, monitoring of conversion rates and continuing optimisation. The court considered the detailed pleadings sufficient to raise a triable claim in copyright and confidentiality. It referred to the “painstaking manner” in which the customer database had been developed and to the technical skill, judgement and creativity said to have gone into generating it.
Notably, simply calling information ‘proprietary’ does not make it so. The information must be secret, have commercial value and steps must have been taken to protect confidentiality.
Pearls of shampoo (and IP) wisdom
I’m quite pleased with my current choice of Ayurveda soapnut shampoo, especially since my eyes do not smart furiously even if it gets in them! Is that a patent at play? Or a secret new ingredient? Perhaps neither. But it is a reminder that the commercial success of luxury Ayurveda lies not simply in repackaging ancient wisdom, but in making it relevant to contemporary consumers.
That is where IP plays its part. No brand can own Ayurveda, or soapnut. What it can own is what it builds upon them: a name consumers trust, a provenance it can prove, an innovation that is genuinely new, and know-how it keeps close. Together, these rights help transform traditional knowledge and modern ingenuity into enduring commercial value. My mother may have known best about soapnut, but it took a modern beauty brand to persuade me to agree.
Bisman Kaur is of counsel at Remfry & Sagar. She is a trademark attorney with more than two decades of experience in advising clients on how to optimise protection and unlock brand value. Bisman takes a keen interest in fashion and is also a part of the firm’s fashion and luxury law practice. She is the editor of the firm’s newsletter and leads media outreach, communications and publishing activities, ensuring that clients and associates are updated on IP developments. Bisman can be reached at [email protected].
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