Qi Founder Rajshree Pathy On The Secret To Making Ayurveda Credible

Rajshree Pathy has spent four decades moving between industries that, on paper, have little in common. Her career, so far, has spanned textiles, sugar, design and now beauty. The thread connecting them, she says, has always been the same. "The common thread has always been the desire to create, to question and to see what is possible,” she says to Robb Report India.

Nearly 25 years ago, Rajshree Pathy co-founded Kama Ayurveda, one of India’s most recognised Ayurvedic beauty labels. “I wanted to move Ayurveda beyond its traditional medicinal perception and create an effective, sensorial beauty experience,” she says. Qi Ayurveda, the brand she launched decades later, picks up where that first chapter left off. “For me, the answer was not to reinvent Ayurveda. It was to take that wisdom further [...] I wanted to build an international brand that could present Ayurveda with the quality and sophistication it deserved.”

Inside Qi Ayurveda’s Swiss-Backed Formulations

Qi takes its name from the life force it channels, a vital energy that moves through body, mind and spirit. Pathy’s relationship with the concept goes back to childhood, to Sunday rituals of hot oil massages and herbal baths her mother prepared at home. That memory became the starting point for the brand, built over two years of work with Swiss scientists to pair distilled Ayurvedic oils with plant-based actives. The result sits across skin and hair care, from a chilled rose facial mist to the Glow Kumkumadi night oil, positioned as a considered, research-backed beauty line.

“Ayurveda has never been a trend or alternative for me. I have simply seen it work,” Pathy says. Every formulation starts with ingredients that have stood the test of time, paired with Swiss botanical actives chosen to complement rather than override them, then taken through R&D, stability, consumer and efficacy testing before launch. “Luxury need not be gold and glitter, where 60 per cent of the price pays for packaging. True value lies within the bottle. We don’t replace Ayurveda; we build upon it.”

For Pathy, the real work lies in the formulation, not the ingredient list. “Familiar ingredients are only the beginning,” she says. “A brand has to develop its own understanding of how those ingredients can be brought together for the needs of today’s consumer [...] If you want to build something that lasts, you have to invest in the formulation.” That same discipline, she argues, is what Indian brands need if they want to compete globally. “India has an extraordinary heritage of beauty rituals and botanical ingredients, but heritage alone is not enough. I don’t believe we need to lose our identity in order to compete globally. We need to understand what is uniquely ours and build it to a standard that can stand anywhere in the world,” she says.

Why Validation Matters More Than Tradition Alone

Validation, she says, is the piece the Indian beauty industry is missing. “The evolved consumer asks questions. They want to understand what is inside a product, why an ingredient has been chosen, how it has been formulated and whether the claims can be supported,” she says. “They are willing to explore traditional approaches, but they are not going to accept tradition alone as a reason to believe something works.” She’s careful to frame this as reinforcement, saying, “Ayurveda has stood the test of time because it works. Clinical testing and scientific research give today’s consumer a way to understand those benefits through measurable evidence.”

That same evidence-led thinking shapes how she talks about ageing. “I’ve never believed that ageing is something we should fight,” she says. “The word anti-ageing suggests that growing older is something to resist, and that the goal of skincare is reversal. I don’t believe in that... pro-ageing is ultimately about accepting the privilege of growing older.”

Asked what she’s sceptical of in the wellness industry, Pathy points to a pattern rather than a product. “I am sceptical of the constant search for shortcuts. There is always another ingredient, another ritual or another promise that is supposed to transform you overnight,” she says. “The products people remember are rarely the ones with the most promises. They are the ones they finish, replace and gradually learn to trust.”

What’s next for Qi, she says, is staying power rather than expansion for its own sake. “The ambition is to make Qi Ayurveda a relevant and sustainable brand. Not a trend or a fad.” Five years out, she expects the category to be judged by a higher bar than heritage alone. “Global consumers will continue to value traditional knowledge, but they will also expect evidence, transparency and quality.” For a founder who has spent a quarter century moving Ayurveda from ritual to research, that’s not a departure from where she started. “Ayurveda’s brightest chapter,” she says, “is still ahead.”