Mane Matters

Hair chats with Dr Sangeeta Velaskar, Vice President and Head, Medical Services and R&D, Kaya about finally rolling out the m uch-awaited personalised hair care services

Q Kaya has been synonymous with skin care services. Why did you decide to launch hair services? Did you see a real need in the market?

A Because we are such a dermatology-based brand, it’s a very natural space for us to be in. As a dermatologist, I’m trained and qualified to treat all aspects of skin and hair. When Kaya began, we were almost exclusively focusing on skin. So in a way, we built that whole equity in skin. But very often, our customers would ask us why we weren’t treating their hair problems. We’ve always had a few hair services but we weren’t going about it in a big way. We feel hair is such a big space that we’d like to explore it fully. When it comes to beauty, your crowning glory comes first.

We realised it was really important for us to launch hair based services. We researched, developed and offered a quality service that’s comprehensive and holistic. We’ve been working on it for a couple of years. We evaluated all the offerings available, here and internationally, both in products and services. We assessed what kind of portfolio we wanted to come out with while maximising the strength of all our dermatologists. Our dermatologists also were asking us why we weren’t doing hair. Hair fall, hair thinning and hair quality is a constant problem most people face. It took us a little while to come up with a comprehensive service that was piloted in one region. We took our learnings over a period of six to eight months, tweaked it based on customer insights and rolled it out across the country.

Q What’s the response been like?

A It’s been very encouraging. In the hair care space, the beauty aspect is only about volume, texture, gloss and styling. And then there is the medical space which is all about procedures.