The Ayurveda Co, a direct-to-consumer beauty and wellness startup that pulled in roughly Rs 125 crore from investors, has shut its doors for good. Co-founder Param Bhargava confirmed the formal closure on Thursday, more than a year after the company halted operations in July 2025 and liquidated its assets.
The brand’s collapse marks a sobering endpoint for a venture that once commanded significant scale. At its height, TAC employed over 1,000 people across payroll and contract roles while building a sprawling retail footprint nationwide.
Bhargava pinned the failure on a single core mistake: growing faster than the business could actually sustain. The company pushed into too many sales channels at once and brought on senior executives before its internal systems could handle that level of complexity. Desperate to salvage the operation, the founders went without pay for over a year and mortgaged family property. Bhargava acknowledged that several strategic calls would have played out differently with the benefit of hindsight.
During its operational run, TAC generated more than Rs 150 crore in annual gross merchandise value, according to co-founder Shreedha Singh Bhargava. Combined with the founders’ previous venture, Khadi Essentials, the two brands produced about Rs 250 crore in net revenue and served 20 lakh customers over seven years. Their peak network included 20 owned stores, 800 beauty advisor counters, 110 distributors, and north of 10,000 retail touchpoints.
The funding story began promisingly enough. A $3 million round in 2022 drew Wipro Consumer Care Ventures as lead investor. A year later, Sixth Sense Ventures anchored a Rs 100 crore Series A, with actor Kajal Aggarwal and several startup founders joining the cap table. The capital was earmarked for offline expansion, manufacturing upgrades, and digital awareness campaigns around Ayurveda.
Those plans included ambitions for unicorn status by FY26 and a public listing by FY28. Neither milestone arrived.
Bhargava now intends to stay within the health and longevity sector for his next project. He also signaled openness to conversations about reviving The Ayurveda Co brand with entrepreneurs interested in the Ayurveda space.
