The founders of skin longevity brand Karmic Beauty, Komal Mittal & Dr Vaibhav Mittal, have been in the beauty industry for more than a decade & have watched skincare evolve from a relatively simple category of cleansers, moisturisers & toners into one of the most science-led spaces in consumer beauty.
We have seen the rise of Korean skincare or K-Beauty as it is popularly known, biohacking, the obsession with vitamin C serum, the retinol boom, the explosion of peptides & exosomes, the popularity of viral facials with bizarre names like vampire facials, skin boosters, microneedling and increasingly advanced skin tightening treatments. Even intricate treatments such as chemical peels have become increasingly common, most requiring medical supervision.
You see, every few years the industry seems to discover a new ingredient, treatment or technology that claims to push the boundaries of what skincare can achieve.
And consumers are buying into it.
Search volumes on search engines are soaring for skincare, face serums, moisturisers, retinol, hyaluronic acid and Korean skincare. People are searching for the best skin care products, the best face serum, the best moisturiser, the best retinol serum, the best hyaluronic acid serum and the best Korean beauty products. They are comparing ingredients, following dermatologists, watching skincare routines online and becoming increasingly comfortable with language that would have sounded highly technical to the average beauty consumer a decade ago.
But after watching this category evolve for more than a decade, we think the shift is bigger than the latest viral ingredient or skincare trend. Consumers still want the best skin care products but the idea of what makes a product ‘best’ is changing. There is growing interest in skin longevity as opposed to anti-ageing because individuals are now looking for ‘age-appropriate’ aesthetics.
And that distinction could very well influence the next decade of beauty.
One of the most interesting changes we have seen is the way people now approach their routines. Skincare is no longer just about picking a face cream for dry skin, an eye cream for dark circles or a dark spot corrector when pigmentation appears. Consumers are becoming more interested in how the pieces fit together.
That shift has also changed the conversation around ingredients. Ceramides, peptides, exosomes, antioxidants, skin mimetic oils, microbiome-supporting ingredients and cellular actives are no longer terms reserved for cosmetic chemists. They are increasingly part of everyday skincare conversations.
“What has changed most is the consumer’s level of curiosity,” says Komal Mittal, Co-founder of Karmic Beauty. “When we started out, people were largely choosing products based on the concern they could see. Today, they are much more interested in the science behind what they are putting on their skin and how different products work together.”
For brands, that creates a much higher bar. The explosion of science-led skincare has brought some genuinely exciting developments into the category but it has also created a marketplace where every new ingredient, complex & technology can sound revolutionary.
We have spent years watching these cycles play out and it has made us increasingly conscious of the difference between innovation that sounds impressive and innovation that solves a real problem.
That distinction became particularly important when we began developing The Lab of Skin Longevity.
We did not want to take an existing skincare philosophy and simply attach longevity to it. We went back to the fundamentals of how skin functions and the biological processes that influence how it changes with time using natural ingredients.
It also changed how we thought about formulation. Rather than building around one hero active, we began looking at how complementary ingredients and delivery systems could work together to support different aspects of skin health.
“For us, longevity is not a single ingredient or a claim that can simply be added to a product,” says Dr Vaibhav Mittal, Co-founder of Karmic Beauty. “It is a formulation philosophy built around understanding the biology of skin and creating products that support it over the long term.”
That way of thinking also changes what we believe beauty brands need to be responsible for. As the category becomes more pronounced, consumers are not simply looking for more choices. They are looking for reasons to trust those choices.
For brands, that means the pressure is no longer only to launch the next big ingredient or create the next viral product. It is to understand the problem deeply enough to know which ingredients belong in a formulation, which claims are worth making and where the product genuinely adds value.
It also raises the bar for communication. Scientific language can make a product sound impressive but it can just as easily make it difficult to understand. We believe consumers should not need a degree in cosmetic science to understand why a product exists or what it is intended to do.
This is particularly important in India, where the conditions our skin experiences are very different from many of the markets that have traditionally shaped global beauty. High UV exposure, heat, humidity, pollution and everyday environmental stress can all influence how skin behaves. Building products for Indian consumers therefore requires more than bringing global trends into the market. It requires understanding the environment they actually live in.
This is one of the reasons we chose to build skin longevity brand Karmic Beauty. The Lab of Skin Longevity is our framework for looking at what happens to skin over time and translating that understanding into longevity-first products designed for the realities of everyday life.
The opportunity for the industry is equally significant. Beauty has become increasingly comfortable borrowing from dermatology, biotechnology, medicine and wellness. The next step may be less about borrowing the language of these fields and more about applying the underlying thinking responsibly.
Consumers will continue to discover new actives. There will be another viral facial, another breakthrough peptide, another treatment that promises to change the way we think about longevity.
Innovation is not going anywhere nor should it but the brands that stand out may be the ones that can connect that innovation to something more meaningful.
And that, for us, is where the next era of skincare begins… with longevity.
