Introduction
Bella Vita Organic, one of India’s fastest-growing direct-to-consumer natural skincare and beauty brands, was founded by Aakash Anand together with his siblings and mother, building the company from the family’s existing salon business into a major online beauty label. This article looks at the founding family’s background, how the brand transitioned from salon services to product retail, and its growth into a nationally recognized D2C brand.
The Founding Family
Bella Vita Organic was built by Aakash Anand, who serves as the company’s founder and CEO, alongside his mother Anju Anand and sister Aashima Anand, with some accounts also noting a third sibling, Saahil Anand, joining shortly after the initial launch. The company traces its roots to the family’s existing Bella Vita salon chain based in Gurugram, giving the founders direct, hands-on experience with the beauty and personal care industry well before they built the product-focused D2C brand.
From Salons to Products
The idea for Bella Vita Organic emerged directly from the family’s salon business, where they had already been creating homemade, organic personal care formulations for their salon clients. Recognizing strong customer demand for these natural alternatives to conventional chemical-heavy salon products, the family pivoted from a service-led salon model toward a dedicated, product-focused retail brand, officially incorporating Bella Vita Organic in July 2018, though some company summaries and directory listings cite slightly earlier founding dates.
Early Growth and Bootstrapped Beginnings
Bella Vita Organic began with a lean, digital-first approach, launching with a bootstrapped investment reported at roughly ₹20-30 lakh and testing initial demand with a small range of handcrafted products including under-eye cream and eyebrow growth oil. The brand’s rapid early traction was strong enough that the family made the notable decision to close three of their four salon locations, retaining just one in Gurugram, in order to focus resources on the fast-growing D2C product business instead.
What Bella Vita Organic Sells
The brand markets its products as non-toxic, paraben-free, and formulated using natural, Ayurvedic ingredients, spanning skincare, haircare, body care, and, more recently, a line of perfumes, with pricing generally positioned in an accessible, “masstige” range designed to appeal broadly across India’s growing middle-class consumer base, particularly strong in Tier II and Tier III cities.
Revenue Growth
Bella Vita Organic’s early revenue growth was notably rapid, with the company’s revenue reported at close to ₹6.4 crore in its FY2019-20 financial year, growing almost five-fold to reach approximately ₹32 crore in the following financial year, FY2020-21, reflecting the strong early product-market fit the brand found particularly among value-conscious consumers in smaller Indian cities.
Institutional Investment and Ownership Evolution
As Bella Vita Organic scaled, the company transitioned from its bootstrapped, family-controlled origins toward a more institutionally backed structure, with investment firm Ananta Capital taking a controlling stake in the business as part of the IDAM House of Brands portfolio, a shift that brought more professional governance and diluted the founding family’s original equity concentration as the brand pursued more aggressive multichannel growth.
Aakash Anand’s Broader Entrepreneurial Ventures
Beyond Bella Vita Organic, Aakash Anand has continued building additional ventures, including founding Unikon.ai, a peer-to-peer networking marketplace launched in November 2023, which itself raised approximately ₹16 crore in seed funding, reflecting his continued entrepreneurial activity beyond the original beauty brand he built with his family.
Conclusion
Bella Vita Organic’s founding by Aakash Anand, alongside his mother Anju Anand and sister Aashima Anand, reflects a genuinely distinctive path from a family salon business into one of India’s notable direct-to-consumer beauty brands. The company’s evolution from bootstrapped, family-run origins to institutionally-backed, professionally managed growth illustrates a broader pattern common among India’s successful D2C brands as they scale well beyond their founders’ original, smaller-scale beginnings.