Great skin is not simply a matter of DNA; a good and proper skin care routine and a conscious choice of beauty products is all you need for the flawless skin. The products you have been applying have a great impact on what you see on the mirror. Though the products to hide the flawed skin is whacking, the extensive care of the skin properly depends upon the kind of skin care products you use.

Not every beauty product is chemical free. There are a whole lot of chemicals composed inside a box of beauty products. It can be scary to find the toxins hidden inside the cosmetics which you have been using for a long time and frustrating to wait for non-toxic alternatives. Fortunately, the beauty industry is slowly but surely shifting towards clean and non-toxic products, and so are consumers becoming increasingly focussed on skin first approach to beauty. This instagrammable generation of skinfluencers knows what they want and need from their skin care products and hence, this month we have a few skin care brands who are promoting the chemical-free non-toxins—organic products for better and healthy skin

Nuga: Essence

Team of two, Suyash and Rasna Shrestha came up with a skin care plan in 2016. However, the manufacturing was not easy in Nepali market due to the limited raw materials, so their plan finally executed only in 2018. With the idea of promoting natural, hand-made and edible-grade personal care products, it’s been two years since Nuga has started manufacturing and distributing products discarding the use of synthetic chemical and preservatives. When TNM got in conversation with Suyash, Manager at Nuga Essence, he was humble enough to provide answers to our queries.

Manufactured in Kathmandu, Nuga Essence has a wide range of minimal skin care products—scrubs, face packs, body lotions and soaps being the major ones. But what really are they made of? “Nepali herbs and spices used in our everyday lives have manifold benefits. For our products, we mostly use the materials like turmeric, fenugreek, and coffee which are easily available in any Nepali kitchen,” Suyash answered. “Body scrubs made of coffee and lip scrub composing chocolate and mint exfoliate your dead cells. The natural grasses and fruits that we use enhance the easy use of these products with no second thought of chemicals. Similarly, the Himalayan pink salt for foot works as a sleep enhancer, detoxification and exfoliating,” he further explained the benefits of their ingredients.

So far, Nuga products are available online on daraz. But, Suyash reveals,

“However, taking convenience of customers into consideration, we are opening a physical store at Jhamsikhel in few weeks.”

Saboo: Nepal

Saboo: specialises in producing all natural personal care products. Started by three childhood friends—Dibeev, Akash and Puneet Shrestha—Saboo Nepal has been supplying personal care products since 2017. According to Dibeev, the trios always wanted to work together since completing their high school. They started their pilot project back in 2012, and it took them about five years to bring the products out in the market. “Back then it was difficult to establish as a company as only a handful of people knew about natural products. But now, since people are curious about organic products, the competition is high,” said Dibeev.

They wanted to explore the market of body wash and were able to make it from natural ingredients but the bottling and packaging turned out to be a major problem. “One of our acquaintances helped us introduce body wash in the market,” Dibeev shared the instance of how hard the initial days of their start-ups were. They import the raw materials and manufacture the final products in Syuchatar, Kathmandu.

Pliant with experimenting, the Shrestha trio started using coffee, herbs and milk as components in their soap.

“And to our surprise, the products came out to be amazing,” Dibeev reflected. “Making soap generally requires different chemicals, however, we use all natural substances—olive oil, soybean oil, coconut oil—going under the saponification process with the minimal amount of caustic soda reacted together,” he shared.

Along with soaps, Saboo: now has a whole range of products like, shampoo, body wash, face wash, essential oil, roll on perfumes and many others. The varieties of essential oil available at Saboo: are lavender, lemon grass, tea tree, ylang-ylang and so on. Similarly, roll on perfumes have the soothing smell of eucalyptus, lavender, cinnamon, peppermint and ylang-ylang. There are a whole lot to choose from and Saboo: Nepal provides the delivery service easily all over Nepal.

Text by Prija Koirala

Photos by Hritik Shrestha and Royal Raj Manandhar