Giving Ayurveda a modern twist: Vedix on putting traditional formulas into new formats and adding new ingredients
The brand belongs to IncNut, a media and commerce company. Due to high volume of visitor traffic to its website, the company started a number of beauty and wellness brands targeting at the female consumers, which included Vedix and skincare brand SkinKraft.
Vedix was founded about 2.5 years ago. While it started off with ayurvedic hair care topical products, it branched into the wellness and supplement space last July, as consumers are more concerned with personal health amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People are looking for solutions to improve their overall wellbeing. Also, since our background is in developing ayurvedic formulations for haircare products and we already have ayurvedic experts on board, we decided to branch into the ayurvedic supplement space," business head Jatin Gujrati told NutraIngredients-Asia.
Each month, the company’s website will be visited by about 300,000 internet users, with about half of them eventually purchasing Vedix's products after browsing through the website, he said.
Vedix's products, which address gut, heart, lungs, skin, and hair concerns, are made purely based on traditional ayurvedic formulas and Prakruti.
Prakruti is a concept that emphasises on the balance of the three doshas, namely vata, kapha, and pitta – which are responsible for a person’s physiological, mental, and emotional health respectively.
This is also the reasons why consumers will need to answer an online questionnaire assessing their gut, skin, hair, lungs, and heart conditions before they are recommended to a set of supplements by Vedix.
While the company follows the traditional Ayurveda and Prakruti framework, it has also added ingredients which could work well with ayurvedic herbs in its upcoming products.
“For example, our upcoming product for managing joint pain will contain both calcium and herbs used in Ayurveda formulas. We do not want to restrict ourselves to using only ayurvedic herbs, we also want to explore ingredients that can work well with ayurvedic ingredients.”
Another example is its capsule supplement product for hair growth. The product formula contains ayurvedic herbs Amalaki (Indian gooseberry), Punarnava (Boerhavia Diffusa), and Krishnatila (black sesame seeds) as well as vitamin C and E.
Gujrati added that Vedix's products differ from the traditional ayurveda products in terms of the dosage format.
For instance, Vedix's products come in the form of capsules, while traditional ayurveda products are usually in powder, oils, and concentrate formats, which he said “might not be palatable to all”.
A challenge of making products in new formats is to ensure that the formulas remain effective. Gujrati said this could be overcome by working with reputable ingredient suppliers who supply standardised extracts.
The company is also planning to make the ayurvedic formulas into more trendy formats such as gummies and teabags.
New range
The company’s plan is to introduce Ayurveda supplements for five more health categories, namely immune health, weight, sleep, pain management, and women’s health, since over 80 per cent of the customers are women.
Of which, 90 per cent of the female consumers are between 20 and 40 years old, which is also why the company is focusing heavily on social media and news sites when marketing its products.
In fact, the company will embark on the ambitious plan of launching 15 to 20 product SKUs for each of these categories.
Overseas expansion
On the other hand, the company plans to introduce its products to the gulf countries and North America to appeal to the large number of Indian diasporas in these regions.
“The awareness of wellness and beauty category is huge in America, and also, the region has a high number of Indian diaspora,” Gujrati said.
