Why Ayurda Exists?
I want to tell you something about how this brand began - because it is not the story you might expect.
You will read many founder stories that go something like this: "I couldn’t find a product that worked for me, so I created one. A gap in the market. A personal struggle. A solution born from frustration."
That is not our story.
Ayurda was not born from a gap. It was not born from a trend. It was not born because the wellness industry finally caught up with something ancient and we decided to ride the wave.
Ayurda was born from a simple, unshakeable conviction:
This has worked for five thousand years.
The recipes in our skincare do not come from a laboratory brief or a consumer insight report. They come from ancient Ayurvedic scriptures - formulations refined across millennia, tested not by clinical trials but by generations of human experience. We use premium therapeutic-grade herbs. Wild-crafted. Potent. Chosen with the same care and specificity that Ayurvedic practitioners have always brought to their work. No shortcuts. No compromises. No substitutions made in the name of cost or convenience.
When we launched, Ayurda was the first authentic Ayurvedic therapeutic skincare brand in Oceania. Not the first to use the word Ayurvedic. The first to mean it - completely, without compromise, from ingredient to intention.
We did not create this because nothing else existed. We created it because nothing else was true enough.
My Greatest Teachers
I am a mother of two - and I mean that as the most important thing on this page, not the last.
I have been using Ayurda products on my daughter since she was three years old. She is twenty-four now. I do not say this as a marketing claim. I say it as a mother who has put these formulations on the skin of someone she loves completely, every year, for two decades - and watched her grow into a radiant young woman who is, to this day, an Ayurda girl. There is no testimonial I could ever offer that means more than that.
My son is different, and equally essential. He is sharp, curious, and constitutionally unwilling to let me rest on what I already know. He challenges my thinking, pushes me deeper, and has a gift for extending ideas far beyond where I first placed them. Every founder needs evidence that their work is true - and someone who refuses to let them stop growing. I am fortunate enough to have both, in the same family.
Between them, they are my greatest teachers.
The Journey
In 1996, I arrived in New Zealand seven months pregnant.
I had left behind a career I was proud of - leading an academic programme in India, building something from the ground up, learning early that real change happens through people, not systems. Those lessons came with me. They still shape how I lead.
What I arrived into was a country where Ayurveda was virtually unknown. My husband Dr. Ajit began seeing patients from home while I built everything around that - the family, the foundation, the quiet infrastructure that makes visible work possible. For eight years I was in that role. Fully. Without resentment. Because I understood what we were building, and I knew my part in it mattered even when it wasn’t seen.
In 2002, I stepped into the foreground.
Dr. Ajit and I co-created the Ayurda Skincare range. I oversaw the brand, the formulations, the identity. Everything had to be right. Premium therapeutic herbs. Ancient recipes. Packaging and communication that respected the intelligence of the person buying it. We were not making wellness products. We were making medicine for daily life.
In 2010, I opened Spa Ayurda on Ponsonby Road - Auckland’s first dedicated Ayurvedic wellness spa. I built it the way I believe wellness should feel: unhurried, intentional, deeply personal. A space where people could arrive depleted and leave restored. It won Best Ayurvedic Spa in Australasia three years in a row. What moves me most is not the recognition. It is the people who kept coming back - who found something here they had been looking for without knowing its name.
In 2024, everything came home.
The spa, the clinic, the skincare, the products - all of it united under one roof, one name, one brand. Ayurda Wellness. I have been shaping this brand for over twenty years. Seeing it whole, at last, feels like the moment a long sentence finally finds its full stop.
What Drives Me?
I am a certified health coach. A woman who has worn many hats - educator, maker, spa owner, brand builder, advocate - and who has learned that all of them lead to the same place.
I am particularly passionate about the wellbeing of women and children. Not as an add-on to my work. As the core of it. I know what women carry. I know how often we are last on our own list. I know that when a woman is well - truly well, in the Ayurvedic sense of balanced in body, mind, and spirit - everything around her changes. That is what I am here for.
Who I Made This For
I am often asked what makes Ayurda different.
Part of the answer is the formulations. The ingredients. The five thousand years of proof behind them.
But the deeper answer is this: I made Ayurda for women like me.
The everyday woman. The one who is holding everything together - her family, her work, her relationships, her home - often all at once, often without being asked how she is doing. The woman who shows up in many forms for the people she loves, and rarely shows up first for herself.
She is real. She is not performing wellness for anyone. She honours her body - not by fighting it, but by listening to it. She is ageing on her own terms, with grace and without apology. She does not have forty-five minutes for a ten-step skincare routine. She wants something that works, something she can trust, and something that makes her feel good in her skin - genuinely good, not just covered up.
That woman does not need to be fixed. She needs to be honoured.
Ayurda was made for her. It was made for me. And if you are reading this and recognising yourself in these words - it was made for you too.
