We recently connected with Lavanya Selka and have shared our conversation below.

Lavanya, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

LŪVIḤ is an all-natural, clean skincare & haircare line infused with time-tested ayurvedic ingredients dedicated to promoting the power of self and created with respect to the world around us.

To me, beauty is accepting ourselves for who we are, both internally and externally. It is important to believe in yourself, to be confident and to remember that you’re worth it. So I named my skincare brand as ‘LŪVIḤ’ as it is the Sanskrit word for “Beauty”.

Inspired by my own real-life experiences, I created LŪVIḤ as a curated modern ayurvedic skincare line dedicated to educating and empowering others to live their happiest, healthiest life. It was born as a true identity for myself and a reminder for overcoming obstacles in life for everyone in my community. It reminds me of acceptance (both physical and mental states). It connects me with who I am and my roots.

When I created LŪVIḤ, my mission was to share the wisdom of mind-body healing system through Ayurveda and provide solutions that avoid ingredients like harmful chemicals, synthetics, and artificial preservatives through these core values.

Purpose & Acceptance: The intent behind the LŪVIḤ is to help people accept themselves and become their better self – be it physical, emotional, cultural or mental well-being. LŪVIḤ a constant reminder to take care of yourself.

Traditional Recipes: My goal was to keep the true essence of traditional recipes as they are more meaningful and effective. Each product is formulated with time-tested ayurvedic recipes, empowered with strategically picked botanicals and superfoods to retain the classic tradition and celebrate the modern elegance.

Clean formulas: The beauty industry is very saturated and more people are consciously choosing clean beauty for various reasons. My own personal experience has driven me to lean on clean formulations. Our products are cruelty-free, vegan, organic, and wild harvested and are completely free of chemicals, parabens, GMOs, Palm derived ingredients, synthetic fragrances, synthetic dyes and micas.

Diversity & Inclusion: LŪVIḤ as a brand, is a reflection of Indian beauty rituals. Through my research I discovered ingredients that are indigenous in other traditions and cultures like Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Eastern skincare routines. It is important for us to create an identity for as many people as possible and to be able to relate ourselves with their own culture and traditions.

Lavanya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born and raised in a small town called Kumbakonam from Tamil Nadu, in Southern India. While growing up, I didn’t realize that I was immersed in the ayurvedic lifestyle throughout my day-to-day life. Hair oil massage, home remedies like turmeric & pepper milk, food with warming spices and aromatic herbs, the cultural rituals I experienced were nothing out of the ordinary, they were just a way of life. It all began in 2014 when I started experiencing postpartum hair loss and skin dullness. Adding to it, I was diagnosed with a rare clinical syndrome affecting the heart due to which I had to undergo a series of medicinal trials and errors in 2015. I was told that I have to be on medication for the rest of my life. Not many people realize that medicines and drugs can sometimes adversely affect our skin. I started developing severe side effects, one of which was acne and breakouts. My skin would flare up and I had intense acne pretty much every day. Dermatologist recommended creams didn’t help to resolve the problem.
All this took a major toll on me, both physical and mentally. I realized that I won’t be able to do much to cure or prevent my heart condition, but I could definitely do something about my skin, the largest organ in our body. I channeled my roots to explore ayurvedic ingredients like turmeric, fenugreek and neem to remediate my external struggles. To my surprise, I achieved great results with consistency and dedication to treat my skin. The frequency of my acne and flare ups reduced considerably. My continuous self-care rituals helped to reduce acne blemishes, dark spots.
I realized that the path to healthy skin is not a one-time ritual, but an on-going process. I have to keep doing this every single day, similar to eating healthy food and maintaining good mental health. This whole experience inspired me to contribute my learnings to build a community and help others overcome their struggles with skin problems. And that’s how the idea of a creating a skincare line using ayurvedic ingredients was born and I created LŪVIḤ.
My extensive professional experience in product innovation, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and having supply chain background helped to develop the framework for LŪVIḤ.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Yes, all our products are hand-crafted using proprietary formulations. WIth no prior experience in the beauty industry, I took online training on skincare formulations. My product development and innovation background helped me to quickly learn the art of making formulations, ensuring GMP best practices are met and creating a safe and potent product. Researched ayurvedic and natural ingredients for more than 3 years. Developed umpteen iterations to get the right formulation by working with a 3rd generation ayurvedic doctor whose family have been practicing Ayurveda for close to 100 years in India. My professional experience in the manufacturing division helps me to understand the supply chain processes, logistics, and to foresee issues arising from them.

It is important for small businesses to scale and finding a manufacturer is critical for the growth of the company. For LŪVIḤ, finding the manufacturer was a real challenge as there are no vendors in the US who could manufacture in a traditional way. Hence I traveled to India in search of a vendor specializing in ayurvedic formulations and found a manufacturer. I also work with the ayurvedic doctor who continues to prepare the ayurvedic bases in India.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We communicate with our clients 1:1 through Instagram DMs and emails to address any questions and also to raise brand awareness. From time to time, we conduct pop-up events to meet clients IRL, make them experience our products and ask questions directly to the founder.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.luvihusa.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luvihusa/