My usual beauty playground is lit up by fluorescent tubes; hotel rooms, boardrooms and stores where the air is perfumed with blotters and a low hum of urgency. In Raipur, my hands smelled of damp soil and freshly cut turmeric. I had coconut water dripping down my wrist, impossibly sweet, drawn from a tree that technically shouldn’t even be growing there.
At the farm belonging to RAS Luxury Skincare, I’m handed glass after glass of this mineral-rich water. Coconut trees don’t naturally thrive in this part of Chhattisgarh. These were planted and nurtured into survival decades ago by the family patriarch of founders Shubhika Jain, Sangeeta Jain and Suramya Jain. That friction is where this story begins.
Today, coconut water on the farm is a functional base, replacing regular water in the brand’s formulations because of its mineral profile. Calendula is picked by hand for barrier repair and inflammation control, especially in active-forward formulas like the Super Recharge Bakuchiol Night Cream. “When we go heavier on actives, calendula helps keep the formula supportive; it takes the edge off,” says Shubhika, co-founder and CEO. Around it, turmeric is pulled fresh from the earth, aloe vera grows thick and grounding, mango trees yield emollient butter, hibiscus blooms (and is “nature’s Botox, as well as magical in haircare,” as co-founder and CRO, Sangeeta tells me) and giloy climbs around neem as it does in nature. A proprietary biotech-developed plant cultivated through tissue culture, valued not for folklore but for science, also thrives.
Picking calendula flowers on the farm. Photographed by Siya Bhambwani
Rose, I learn, is the ingredient most likely to lie to you. “True rose essential oil can cost upwards of ₹20 lakh per litre. That’s exactly why a lot of what circulates in the market is diluted or blended,” Shubhika tells me. But RAS refuses shortcuts, according to Suramya Jain, co-founder and CMO: “We didn’t want to enter the rose category unless we could do it in a way we trust. We use pure rose extractions or we leave it out entirely,” she says. The same philosophy extends to haircare and their night ritual staples, like the Revival Kumkumadi Night Face Elixir. Their oils and serums rely entirely on botanicals—hibiscus, aloe, roots and flowers—eschewing minoxidil altogether.
The fields at sunset. Photographed by Siya Bhambwani
Since launching in 2018, RAS has built a process that is relentlessly controlled. Every sourced ingredient is double-checked against R&D approvals before it enters production. From there, it’s mixed, produced and filled with no outsourcing blind spots. They even handle their own packaging. Separate warehouses store different components to prevent cross-contamination, a logistical undertaking most brands largely avoid. Here, it’s non-negotiable. This rigour is held together by the brand’s founding trio: Shubhika Jain and Suramya Jain, alongside their mother Sangeeta Jain, ensuring the farm’s intelligence doesn’t get lost in translation by the time it’s bottled.
Standing there, soil still under my nails, I realised I would never be able to return to beauty I can’t trace back to a living plant. This is what ingredient literacy in its rawest form will do to you. Soon enough, I’ll be back under fluorescent lights, trading farm paths for presentations. But some part of me will still be here, running my fingers through baskets full of rose petals, reminded that Mother Nature wrote the first luxury skincare formula.
