French beauty giant L’Oréal, which has global sales of $44.5 billion, is celebrating its 30th anniversary.^th year in India. Aseem Kaushik, who took over as CEO of L’Oréal India in January 2023, has been with the company for exactly this period. “I have been part of L’Oréal’s 30-year history in India,” he says with a disarming smile, describing how he was one of the first to join the company when it was established here.

We meet at Machan, the jungle-themed cafe at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi for a quick lunch. Kaushik, based in Mumbai, where L’Oréal India has its headquarters, is here for a FICCI meeting on skill development. , and has a flight to catch after lunch. L’Oréal relies heavily on skills and much of its growth in India comes from its investments in hairdresser and salon training, you learn.

Kaushik says he is the proverbial small-town boy, having grown up in Chandigarh. He came to Delhi to study commerce and joined L’Oréal in 1994 right after.

He talks about how, when L’Oréal – synonymous with hair care – first entered India, it chose to do so with its Garnier brand, launching Ultra Doux shampoos. L’Oréal also has a global fleet of some 39 brands, 26 of which are present in India. The brands are organized into four divisions: professional products, consumer products, luxury and dermatological.

Bihar to Mumbai

“Very soon after I joined, L’Oréal sent me an incredible post,” Kaushik says with a straight face. “Where, Paris? you ask impatiently. “Bihar,” he replies with a mischievous wink, describing how he lived in Patna and launched Garnier products in several cities in the state.

“Apparently everyone was very happy with my performance, because six months later one of my bosses came and told me that I would be the first person on the team to go international,” continues- he. “Oh, Paris?” you ask.

“I was told that I was going to launch operations in Nepal,” he replies with a broad smile. Now you realize that Kaushik has a funny sense of humor. Recalling those days, he says air connectivity was limited and he often took the bus from Patna to Kathmandu – a journey that took 30 hours.

Since we don’t have much time, we quickly order our starters (this is called Machan pre-hunting) and our main courses. Kaushik orders a chicken dish for himself and a Tuscan pizza for me. They are good without being memorable. For main course, without seeing the menu, I ask for Sariska Footprints – a pearl millet khichdi that I had really enjoyed during the big renovation and relaunch of the iconic 46-year-old restaurant a few years ago.

To my great disappointment, it is not available. So, I accompany Titicaca leaves (a salad of quinoa, asparagus, beetroot). Kaushik, who says he misses some of Delhi’s good food, orders a Kaziranga kathi kebab (chicken tikka egg rolls) and receives an unamused look from the staff when he says he hope it will be of “Nizam standard”. What arrives on the table is a huge rustic-looking plate which he balks at. This five-star believes in hearty portions. My salad is refreshing and hearty.

Picking up his story, Kaushik describes how, at that time, L’Oréal believed that skincare was the big market in India. So, after shampoos, she launched Garnier treatments. “The very first anti-wrinkle cream in India was launched by Garnier,” he explains, as were the very first conditioners.

It was in 1996 that the company launched coloring. Interestingly, in the Indian market, Kaushik says, at that time, men were the biggest consumers of commercial hair color products. “It wasn’t that Indian women didn’t hide their gray hair, but it was more about henna and other solutions,” he says. More than 28 years ago, women visited beauty salons primarily for skin care – hair was mostly just a trim, he points out.

“We launched a cream-based hair color. This marked the launch of the L’Oréal brand in India,” he says. “Hair color is a category in which we continue to hold the number one market share in India. Here, we have literally grown the hair industry from scratch,” says Kaushik. And that’s where skills development comes in.

“L’Oréal began training hairdressers to color, straighten hair and treat hair. We have trained nearly 350,000 hairdressers,” says Kaushik, who joined the professional products division in 2002 with the mission of creating salons. “We have helped create almost 8,000 salons,” he says, highlighting successful channels like Looks and Geetanjali that have benefited from the program. “Seems like there was a hair salon in Karol Bagh and Geetanjali was in Green Park. Today they are large unisex salons on high streets and shopping centers,” he says. “For the first collaboration with Looks, we called on the architects and designed the living room,” he explains. “Then I launched Matrix, our accessible hair color brand. Today, Matrix is ​​present in more than 15,000 salons,” he says.

He claims that L’Oréal has a win-win CSR program called Beauty for a Better Life, under which since 2014 the company has trained 12,000 underprivileged women and placed 70% of them in salons . The goal is to accelerate this process and train 100,000 such women by 2030.

Overcoming barriers

After his time in salons, Kaushik returned to the consumer products industry working on brands like Garnier, Maybelline and L’Oréal. So, which is more important: institutional sales or retail? “Retail, definitely. We reach 1.8 million retailers compared to 50,000 salons,” he explains.

He says that when L’Oréal launched in India, it faced two major hurdles. One was distribution. The second mountain to climb was how to find the right consumer with the necessary disposable income. “It took us 30 years to reach this depth of distribution,” he says. The second problem has been solved by the arrival of digital, notably the acceleration of post-Covid adoption. “Previously, it was a one-way communication with the consumer via television or print media. Today, digital technology has solved this problem. With accurate media, we can target the right type of consumer and have a two-way conversation,” he says.

Significantly, in 2019, Kaushik was posted to Hong Kong, where he led professional products for Asia Pacific and saw the impact of Covid up close. From there he moved to Singapore. “In Hong Kong, we were the first to develop a crisis management manual that the group could easily implement,” he explains. Have sales been hit hard? “Yes. But China and North Asia had a very strong e-commerce business and digital infrastructure, so sales there were not hit as hard as in India,” says -he.

“When I returned in 2023, India had a different consumer and a different digital stack that was clearly working well. This opened up a tremendous opportunity for us,” he says.

But hasn’t the pandemic also led to more competition for L’Oréal, in the form of hundreds of new D2C beauty brands taking off in India. “It was great news for us,” he replies. “India is a country of more than a billion inhabitants and the beauty market here only represents 7 billion euros per year. This represents 7 euros per person per year, probably one of the lowest in the world. For example, in Indonesia it is 25 euros. So there is a lot of room for growth in India. D2C brands help the entire beauty industry grow,” he says.

Has L’Oréal considered acquiring any of the D2C brands? “Not yet. Although acquisition is part of the growth playbook in countries. We are regularly studying opportunities,” responds Kaushik, revealing that L’Oreal has invested in private equity firms like DSG Consumer Partners in Singapore and also made a small investment in Fireside Ventures in India (which has invested in brands like MamaEarth).

Growth in India so far has been purely organic and L’Oréal is the second largest beauty player in the country, just behind Unilever. And now growth is accelerating. In recent years, L’Oréal has launched its luxury products in India – led by brands like YSL, Lancôme, perfumes like Armani, Prada, Diesel, etc. “That’s how we have 26 brands here – most of the popular flavors you see. in department stores come from L’Oréal,” says Kaushik.

Last year, L’Oreal also launched its dermatological beauty division in India with the brand CeraVe, and Kaushik is optimistic about it. The consumer-to-dermatology ratio is the lowest in India, he says, and the company is looking to change that.

Big bet on technology

He also passionately describes the big bet on beauty technology that L’Oréal made on a global scale ten years ago. “With consumers fully connected and shopping digitally, L’Oréal anticipated this eight to ten years ago, introducing virtual try-ons and other technology offerings,” says Kaushik. It acquired Modiface in 2018, a global leader in augmented reality and AI for the beauty industry. “With our skin scans available virtually, you can get a personalized regimen and routine for the products that will be recommended to you,” says Kaushik.

It also describes how the L’Oréal GPT application allows 90,000 employees to make any decision. “It’s developed in-house. Not many companies offer this kind of thing. What AI does is accelerate our creations, help decode our consumers with all the information and data we have, and leverage technologies to be very precise in our offers to each consumer. India exploits these assets to offer beauty to everyone rather than beauty to all,” he summarizes.

One percent of L’Oréal’s massive global turnover is spent on R&D. India has two R&D centers – in Mumbai and Bangalore – with 150 scientists working to create specific formulations to meet the needs of Indian consumers. So, have Indian products reached the world? Kaushik says, “An India-specific creation for Garnier men, which has gone global, has been developed and produced in India. Regarding hair coloring, we have developed sachets called Garnier Black Natural in India which cost less than Rs 50. This technology is also being launched in Europe this year. “

Now it’s time for Kaushik to head to the airport. He barely touched his plate of rolls, mind you. An original hobby, you ask him? And then let yourself be enchanted by his answer. An avid biker, he occasionally takes a complete break of 8 to 10 days, as he travels on his Royal Enfield without a plan, disconnecting from everything “much to the chagrin of his team,” he says with a smile . “I’m going solo. I choose a direction and go there without using Google Maps and stopping wherever I want, turning right or left on a whim, not booking a hotel, but camping or staying at someone.

Since taking over as CEO of MD India, he says he hasn’t been able to take that journey of disconnection. “I hope soon,” he said, taking his leave.