Going back to your roots

With multiple skin care products at our disposal nowadays, it is difficult to pick one. Today, we have products that cater to diverse requirements for the skin and hair but can you trust them with delivering  effective and long lasting results? 

Offering tried and tested solutions for daily skin and hair care routine, Dr Barshani Gokhale came up with her beauty brand Navami five years back. Made from simple and natural ingredients, these sustainable beauty products are similar to those which your grandmother may have advised you to use when you were young.  

Family beauty secrets 
Dr Gokhale, an MBBS degree holder from Grant Medical College and Sir J J Group of Hospitals, Mumbai, has been practising since 17 years. 

“About five years back, I started this brand Navami with only four products. It is based on the book written by my grandmother which had a lot of recipes for skin care. I have been following them since childhood,” she says.

To make the products have a longer shelf life, her mother made a few modifications and Dr Gokhale added a few more ingredients. “But my grandmother’s recipes form the basis of these products and we have been following them for generations. I also feel that a part of me is always inclined towards naturopathy than allopathy. So despite being a general physician, my line of treatment has been that of advising people to take more of simple and natural medicines like kadha. Only if nothing works, I recommend antibiotics,” she says, adding, “Also, I had a lot of patients asking me for some of the products that I used to make at home and give it to them. This led me to start  Navami.”  

Initially, Navami offered four products including Coffee Body Polish, Overnight Face Oil, Body Oil and Hair Oil. “I started with a total of 50 bottles of these four products and displayed them at a stall during Durga Puja. On the first day, there was no response, but then a lady bought one of the products, and next, her friends bought them all. Word-of-mouth publicity helped sell the products,” says Dr Gokhale who now sells 16 product types. 
   
Putting across her recommendations, she says, “I recommend that people try the hair oil, which others call it ‘Liquid Gold’. Thirty plus women should try the overnight face oil and the radiance face pack. The face oil, which is a mixture of nine oils, rose water and ACV, must be applied after sunset only.” 

Sharing a simple tip she says that whatever fruit you eat, you can mash a small piece of the fruit and apply it on your face, neck and exposed parts of the body, and rinse it off after sometime.

Longer shelf life 
Word-of-mouth publicity and social media pages have helped Navami grow. “I started a Facebook page and now, I have people calling me from India, US and other places for my products. Word-of-mouth publicity has helped a lot too,” she says. 

About increasing the shelf life of products, she says, “Earlier, when the products / recipes were made, they were used immediately, so there was no question of shelf life. But it’s not the case today. I swapped a few ingredients so that they could be stored and used anytime. Also, with the use of fresh products, there is a presence of moisture content in the recipe, which can spoil the product in the long run. To avoid the same, certain replacements were done. For instance, in some recipes lemon juice has been replaced with apple cider vinegar; for the face pack, soaked masoor dal has been replaced with dried powdered dal; and fresh neem leaves in the hair mask has been replaced with dried neem leaves. Most of these changes were made mainly for preservation but without using any preservatives.” 

All green  
With a bigger push towards sustainability in all sectors and industries, Navami too has joined the movement. 

“At Navami, we don’t use plastic, instead we use glass. I put a lot of videos on social media, where we can reuse these bottles. All our products are natural. For instance, I go to the local kachi ghani for the oil. I don’t buy oil from any store and I don’t use too many fancy oils. All the oils that are used are easily available in India, like sesame oil, coconut oil and so on. Apart from these, we are also transparent about the proportions of ingredients used in the recipes. Also, all the ingredients are used for medicinal value only and not for cosmetic value. We are ethically making the products, trying to be eco friendly, keeping true to the quality and trying to go back to our roots,” she says.
 
Since the products are made of natural ingredients there is no strong synthetic smell. Dr Gokhale started making these products on her own initially. Later, she was joined by her mom, and now Navami has grown into a seven-member team. 

If you strongly believe in naani ke nuskhe or home remedies, you can try Navami’s products.