Beauty baroness Shahnaz Husain, who turned 80 last month, was one of India’s OG influencers long before the term was coined. As the pioneer of organic green beauty in the country, she brought with her great business acumen, unabashed in-your-face marketing chutzpah, and a prescient sense of future trends. In her, the India of the 1970s and 80s found its combination of Anita Roddick and Coco Chanel.
Such was the power of her marketing that thousands of young women wanted a totemic vial of cream vial from Shahnaz Husain, her eponymous brand. Naming it after herself, as though she were already a celebrity, was a mark of her self worth.
Starting in 1971, she invited Indian women to enter the hallowed portals of haute couture and international cosmetics with a promise of exotic transformation. Everyone flocked to her, including Hollywood stars, British royalty, and even Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The nation was mesmerised by her personality, which she was smart enough to encash and promote, as well as her differently packaged salves and creams.
Silver spoon
Husain was born into a powerful and illustrious Deccani family. Indira Gandhi was a family friend and Motilal Nehru stayed at her grandfather Samiullah Beg’s home when he visited Hyderabad. Her father Nasir Ullah Beg was chief justice of Allahabad High Court and her uncle Mirza Hameedullah Beg was chief justice of the Supreme Court.
But young Shahnaz had different plans for herself. Supremely confident and with a nod and wave to feminism, she thought nothing of setting up a business after getting married and becoming a mother at 16.
At 27 she launched her business with a tiny clinic in Delhi, set up with ₹35,000 borrowed from her father. By then she had done cosmetology courses at leading institutions such as Helena Rubestein, Lancome and Schwarzkopf. But rather than flying back with Western vials and philtres, she merged 5,000-year-old Ayurvedic formulations with western packaging and labelling. She also linked the brand’s marketing to her own carefully crafted persona.
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Her first breakthrough was a saffron-based skin brightener that became a sensation among London socialites. Soon, Harrods came calling, making her the first Indian to secure counter space in the legendary store. It was followed by counters at Selfridges and Galeries Lafayette among a retinue of others.
Princess Diana was reportedly fond of her gold facial kit while Martha Stewart featured her on her show. Bollywood royalty of an earlier era would not dream of getting married without a Shahnaz bridal glow treatment. In Tokyo, women lined up to buy her hair oils while in Dubai her under-eye cream sold out within hours of restocking.
Marketing genius
If her products are rooted in ancient wisdom, her marketing is pure showbiz. On occasion she has said that a brand is like theatre – you must give people something to remember. And remember they do. She became turbo marketing maven in a monarch’s splendiferous robes presiding over a miniature palace set in Barbie doll colours and plastic flowers. Her choreographed public appearances and piles of publicity material made her a regular beauty advisor on TV programmes. Naturally this brought in more business.
Before Gwyneth Paltrow’s clean beauty became a buzzword, Shahnaz Husain‘s products sat sandwiched between La Prairie and La Mer. Her plastic vials, emblazoned with her heavily kohled eyes and a shock of black hair, contained ayurveda-inspired potions that were as much about the seller. With theatrical flair, she pirouetted to fame using the ‘Sha’ prefix as a crown for beauty. “Anyone can sell beauty products,” she once said. “I sell ancient wisdom in modern jars.”
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As clean beauty and wellness appear to merge, Husain seems more prescient than ever. She didn’t just build a beauty brand but created a blueprint for how Indian heritage could be marketed to modern consumers.
Over the years, she has emerged as a supplier of herbal cosmetic products to Indian women thirsting for affordable beauty care, with 380 patented formulations. In one sense, her closest Western parallel might be Estee Lauder, who built her empire from scratch. But Husain brought in a new element to her business by opening a school for girls from poor families who could neither hear nor speak, training them and giving them jobs in her own salons. While she has been cagey about her financial figures, some estimates put her peak revenues at about $375 million.
In later years, many challenged the efficacy of her creams, and glossier entrants backed by multibillion dollar Western corporations slowly edged her out of the top spot. But with her daughter Nelofar Currimbhoy taking over the reins in international marketing after the suicide of her rapper son Sameer, the brand still holds sway among the faithful.
A new generation of beauty entrepreneurs has emerged in her wake, but very few have her flair and showmanship as well as her shrewd business skills.
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