For as long as Anshita Mehrotra can remember, conversations at her home were all about cosmetic formulations, ingredients,  and consumer behaviour. For Mehrotras, beauty wasn’t just another industry but a family business. 

Her mother, Shailey Malhotra, had built Fixderma into one of India’s trusted skincare brands, serving millions of consumers. And the obvious path for Anshita was to step into an already successful business.

After graduating in Canada and returning to India in 2018, Mehrotra began exploring a gap in the beauty market that’s worth tapping into. And it didn’t take long to find one. Like millions of Indians with naturally curly hair, she knew the daily struggle of keeping her textured hair hydrated. 

The products available in the market largely revolved around oils, which moisturised but often left hair greasy and difficult to manage. There was little available that could hydrate curls, style them, be used daily, and still feel light and smell good. The market was dominated by expensive salon-grade products that were not suitable for daily use.

“There was no curl cream or shampoo for hair like mine. The market simply didn’t exist, and there was a huge unmet need staring us in the face, and I knew I could build in that space,” Anshita Mehrotra, founder of Fix My Curls, told Inc42. 

Having grown up around the beauty industry, she understood the product development process, knew the experts she needed to work with, and had access to manufacturing capabilities.

After almost eight months working with hair care specialists, she developed what she says was the category’s first leave-in curl cream and hair gel specifically for the Indian market.

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