CHAM Skincare: How Two Serial Founders Are Building A Brightening Brand On Honesty Over Hype

When Jeeshan Khan and Faiz Ahmed built Velomora, India’s first comfort-led invisible bodywear brand for women, they did not set out to build a second company. But running a consumer brand closely, watching how markets behave when marketing outruns formulation, gave them a pattern-recognition instinct they found difficult to switch off.

In India’s skincare industry, that pattern was everywhere.

“We saw skincare following the same path we had deliberately avoided in apparel,” the founders have said of the period leading to CHAM’s launch: “instant-effect claims, ingredient hype, and products that prioritise appearance over genuine quality.” 

Single-ingredient marketing had turned the brightening category into a race for the boldest claim on the packaging rather than the most honest product inside it. A Vitamin C serum was no longer a formulation decision. It was a label.

The founders decided to build the alternative. CHAM, a brightening skincare brand developed to French formulation standards and produced in small batches through partner laboratories, launched from Noida with a founding principle the founders describe as supporting the skin rather than overpowering it.

Bootstrapped, D2C-led, and in its earliest stage of growth, the brand has already reached 10,000 active users with a 70% repeat customer rate, a number that carries more weight than any early-stage revenue figure because it answers the one question every skincare brand eventually has to face: does the product actually work in daily use over time?

The Observation That Started It All

Building Velomora required the founders to develop a specific kind of sensitivity: the ability to identify the gap between what a product claims and what it delivers in the hands of a real customer. In invisible bodywear, that gap had been filled by imports designed for a different body type, a different climate, a different skin tone. In skincare, the founders found the same structural failure, just dressed in different language.

The modern brightening category is built around hero ingredients. Niacinamide, Vitamin C, Alpha Arbutin: each has genuine clinical validation, and each has been turned into a marketing category rather than a formulation decision. 

“The market is saturated with single-ingredient marketing and instant-effect promises, but short on brands formulating for balance, comfort and lasting radiance,” the founders observed as they mapped the gap before CHAM’s launch.

What that observation pointed toward was not a new ingredient or a cheaper price point but a different formulation philosophy entirely. How an active ingredient performs in a finished product depends as much on what surrounds it as on the ingredient itself. A Vitamin C serum in an unstable base delivers a fraction of its clinical potential regardless of the concentration on the label. A thoughtfully formulated product in a stable, synergistic base may deliver considerably more, more consistently, over a longer period of daily use. That gap between ingredient marketing and formulation integrity became the brief for CHAM.

A Philosophy Built Around The Whole Formula

CHAM’s founding formulation approach centres on what the brand calls composition over hero ingredients.

“The base matters as much as the active,” says Jeeshan Khan to CEO VINE. “The texture matters as much as the molecule.”

Most of the brightening category competes on the headline active. The brand competes on something harder to communicate in a product name but more durable in a customer’s daily experience: how the whole formula works together.

Formulas are developed in collaboration with experienced cosmetic chemists working to French formulation standards, produced in small batches through partner laboratories with close attention to ingredient quality, texture, and how each product integrates into a calm daily routine. The approach draws on what the founders describe as decades of skin-biology research into how cells communicate and maintain balance, with every formulation decision made around supporting the skin’s natural processes rather than producing a surface effect that bypasses them.

“We focus on hydration balance, barrier support and calm skin conditions,” says Jeeshan Khan, “alongside an immediate feel of comfort.” 

The result, in the brand’s own framing, is skin that looks naturally luminous because it is genuinely supported, not skin that appears briefly bright because of reflective films or silicones applied to its surface. Products are non-comedogenic, paraben-free, and skin-friendly, deliberately avoiding both the active-overload tendency of ingredient-led skincare and the short-lived surface shine that defines most of what the brightening aisle currently offers.

Five Products, One Complete Routine

CHAM’s current range was designed as a complete daily brightening routine rather than a collection of standalone items. A Brightening Face Wash, a Brightening Face Mask in a pack of five, a Brightening Face Cream, a Brightening Face and Body Serum, and a Brightening Body Lotion, all formulated to complement each other within a single daily ritual.

The deliberate extension of the brightening range to the body reflects a positioning decision the founders have been explicit about: uneven tone and dullness are not confined to the face. 

“CHAM focuses on how ingredients interact within a formula,” Jeeshan says, “and on brightness extended beyond the face to the body.”

For a brand built around brightening as a genuine skin condition rather than a photogenic surface effect, limiting the range to the face would have contradicted the founding thesis. Early customer feedback has pointed to visible improvements in skin tone and natural radiance within days of consistent use, a response the brand has not amplified into instant-result claims.

The Market Catching Up To The Philosophy

The brand enters a category that is large, structurally growing, and experiencing a consumer shift that directly supports its founding thesis. India’s skincare market was valued at $8.78 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $17.69 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 8.43%, according to Astute Analytica.

The D2C beauty and personal care segment within that market is growing considerably faster, at 36.4% annually through 2032, driven by ingredient-aware consumers who are increasingly sceptical of single hero-ingredient marketing and more interested in formulation quality over time.

The most direct external validation that this consumer shift is commercially significant arrived in January 2025, when Hindustan Unilever signed a definitive agreement to acquire Minimalist, the science-led, ingredient-transparent D2C skincare brand, for approximately ₹3,000 crore. For a brand built from day one on the same formulation-honest philosophy, the deal is the kind of market signal that no amount of internal positioning work can replicate.

CHAM competes in the mass-premium tier, broadly in the ₹200 to ₹500 range, alongside active-led brightening brands with considerably more established distribution.

“We don’t want to bring just another glow product with a new ingredient on its label,”says Jeeshan Khan. “It needs to be something that works differently and works specifically for the skin it’s designed for.”

Building Quietly, Growing Through Trust

With no external funding and a deliberate commitment to letting the product carry the brand’s early growth, the brand has built its customer relationships through education and content rather than performance marketing. The CHAM Journal blog covers skin biology and formulation thinking in a register designed to build genuine consumer understanding. A “Letters from CHAM” email programme extends the relationship beyond the transactional. Social presence spans Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and Quora, with content oriented around skincare education rather than before-and-after imagery.

Customer support operates through WhatsApp, keeping the relationship direct. Distribution runs through the brand’s own Shopify-based website at chamskincare.com, alongside Myntra, Ajio, and other marketplaces. 

“We’ve seen an excellent response, especially for skin tone and natural radiance within days of use,” says Jeeshan.

The approach reflects the same discipline the founders applied at Velomora, where a 30% repeat customer rate and 50,000 customers were built before any external capital was raised, by prioritising product trust over acquisition speed.

The brand’s 70% repeat rate in its earliest stage is a stronger retention signal at a comparable point in the journey, and the founders treat it accordingly: as proof that the formulation philosophy is working in daily use, not just in the brand story built around it.

“The focus is calm, even, naturally radiant skin achieved through formulation synergy, not single hero ingredients or instant surface effects,” Jeeshan Khan shares with CEO VINE.

CHAM Skincare is headquartered in Noida, India. Products are available at chamskincare.com and across Myntra, Ajio, and other marketplaces. Sister brand: Velomora, India’s first comfort-led invisible bodywear brand for women.