How Forest Essentials chose ‘anti-growth’ to thrive in beauty

Forest Essentials is a rare brand for which the numbers, or the hype, doesn’t notify the whole story.

And it’s some story.

The Ayurveda beauty company has eschewed received wisdom about what builds a luxury cosmetics business tick—saturation advertising, influencer marketing, persistent discounting—and still turned tidy profits. Attractive enough for multinational major Estée Lauder to acquire it in one of the largegest deals in the industest.

Forest, founded in 2001 with a flagship store in Delhi’s posh Khan Market, didn’t chase growth like its competitors did. If anything, it adopted an anti-growth playbook. Where a brand was supposed to grow by rapidly expanding footprint, Forest went deliberately slow, opening a couple of stores each year. By 2015, it had only about 35 stores.

The company did not pay for marketing for years. And even now it spfinishs far less on advertising and marketing than competitors like Honasa Consumer, the owner of Mamaearth, or Kama Ayurveda. If Honasa puts Rs 36 of every Rs 100 it builds into advertising, Forest spfinishs only Rs 7.

When the Covid pandemic turbocharged the beauty and personal care industest online, Forest again stood apart. Its peers went ballistic with influencer marketing and single-ingredient products to increase sales, but Forest scaled its brick-and-mortar presence instead, expanding to over 175 exclusive stores as of 2026. Once the world reopened, beauty brands realised the only way to continue growing was by going offline. Forest had already arrived there, and was building money.

In FY25, the company built over Rs 580 crore in revenue. Honasa, about 4X the size, clocked about Rs 1,900 crore in comparison. But where Honasa turned a profit of Rs 60 crore, Forest generated Rs 130 crore.

Forest is now among the top 10 cosmetics and skincare luxury brands in India, with a market share of over 10%, according to a report by the global management consultancy Kearney.

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