Gujarat Man Builds A Skincare Brand With Ladyfinger (Bhindi)

If you’re someone who is even remotely interested in skincare, you’ve probably already seen beauty products that use everything from papayas and pineapples to strawberries and onions. There’s even a brand that uses donkey milk, for that matter.

But ladyfinger or bhindi? You’d have never heard of it.

Until now, of course.

This is Alara, a homegrown D2C brand that has made skincare and haircare products with ladyfinger (Okra). It has become one of the world’s first okra-based beauty brands that primarily adopts bhindi as its hero ingredient.

Alara’s founder Yogin Sojitra tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview, “Okra has more benefits than you can even imagine. We’ve gone neck-deep in research for about one and a half years and realized that it’ll really be the next big thing in skincare.”

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Yogin Sojitra comes from the small town of Gondal in Gujarat. His family has been involved in tobacco trading for the longest time and has been one of the top distributors for the likes of Rajnigandha, supari, and cigarettes.

He did his Diploma in Electronics and Communication. Talking to Startup Pedia, he says, “I was always a bright student and excelled in academics, but still didn’t really want to do a job. Brought up in a business family, the spirit of entrepreneurship was always inside me.”

Yogin’s family got the sales distributorship for Gratia, a luxurious bath and body brand. But since it was a new-gen business that demanded modern ideas of selling and marketing, Yogin was handed its reins. 

After some time, when the family was divided, Gratia went to the other side, and Yogin was left with the tobacco business. “I helped my father in the tobacco business but wasn’t really a fan of how it didn’t leave any room for innovation. I wanted to build something from scratch and enter the startup world,” he adds.

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Yogin looked at how D2C was booming and new homegrown brands were springing up, managing end-to-end operations, and leaving a mark. He started researching a product to innovate and almost as if the universe was guiding him, he came across a reel that would go on to become the starting point of his brand.

Yogin says, “I love watching Instagram reels—but always the ones that add value. One day, I saw an African woman applying ladyfinger’s juice on her hair. I was intrigued because I had never seen anyone do that. Out of curiosity, I started researching okra’s skin and hair benefits and was stunned.”

He immediately found the product and the market he wanted to enter—the skincare segment that blended nature and science.

Yogin’s cousin resonated with the idea and joined him as soon as he finished his studies.

And thus, Alara was born in 2022. It went on to be officially founded in 2023.

CHALLENGES

Yogin Sojitra spent the next one and a half years researching the benefits of okra and how it enormously helps the skin and hair. He found that okra water has qualities that absorb nutrients and help brighten the skin from the inside. It also has a lot of vitamins and minerals, especially Vitamin C, which is considered a potent antioxidant.

After research, Yogin and his cousin reached out to a manufacturer, sat down with them to discuss the ingredient list, formulated the products, and took care of the packaging.

Alara started with a 100% bootstrapped approach. Yogin says, “I invested Rs 25 lakhs from my savings into the entire process.”

In November 2023, after Diwali, Alara finally went live in the market. But marketing the products was a challenge. Yogin reached out to performance marketing agencies but burned a lot of money only to see a negative ROAS (return on ad spend).

“Finally, I decided to do it all by myself. I started taking content marketing very seriously and posted consistently on my Instagram. A lot of leads started coming in from there,” he says.

But a tragedy happened in May 2024—Yogin’s cousin and co-founder died in a fatal car accident. This shook him to the core and made him rethink everything.

Yogin opens up on the incident, “It came as a shock. He had just left after meeting with me regarding Alara. The next thing I knew, he had met with an accident. For the next two to three months, I had put Alara to a stop. I just couldn’t find it in me to start everything again, without my cousin.”

But with an Ahemadabad startup expo that he attended some months later, Yogin realized that he had truly innovated something out of the world and it deserved to be out there in the market and earn a name for itself. 

He says, “Sometimes, you don’t understand what you’ve made until you get credible, external validation. That is what happened with Alara, and I bounced back.”

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ALARA: OKRA-BASED SKINCARE AND HAIRCARE PRODUCTS

Alara is one of the first brands in India to be developing products with Okra as its primary ingredient. They are an amalgamation of nature and science with 100% transparency regarding the ingredients and their specific uses.

Yogin credits the transparency ethic of Alara to his father. “My father has always taught me to be honest, straightforward, and transparent with everything. With Alara, I want customers to know exactly what we’ve put inside the products and the specific use-case each ingredient serves,” he says.

On each product page, customers can go to the Ingredient section and see a drop-down list of each natural and scientific ingredient used and the ‘why’ behind it.

Alara offers highly effective products like Okra Gel, Okra Facewash, Okra Gel Shampoo, and Okra Shower Gel. They offer a host of benefits without attacking the protective barrier of the skin and hair.

Alara’s Okra Gel, for instance, is called the “ultimate hair and skincare formula.” It fights acne, lightens blemishes, balances the skin’s oil production, and promotes hair growth while strengthening it from within.

Alara is positioned as a premium brand that caters to skin and hair problems and solves them with a fusion of nature and science. The products are priced between Rs 395 and Rs 495. The trial packs, however, are available at Rs 99.

LOOKING AHEAD

Yogin Sojitra tells Startup Pedia that he’s so engrossed in Okra that his friends have started teasing him by the name of ‘Bhindi Master.’ “But that’s fine, I think I really am obsessed with Okra and Alara,” he says.

As an early-stage brand, Yogin didn’t reveal the revenue numbers but is positive that the brand will take off with word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews. On his Instagram page, he posted an organic review of a man who was struggling with stubborn acne marks and found no relief with any product. But Alara’s Okra Gel cleared his face in just two weeks.

“I believe in putting out such reviews so people truly understand what Alara is all about and how Okra can literally change how their skin and hair look and feel. The thing is, since it's a new product, we have to put in extra efforts to drive awareness,” Yogin says.

As a social initiative, Alara will be donating 5% of its annual profits to endangered animals.

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