The Ayurveda Co Shuts Down After Scaling To ₹250 Cr Revenue

D2C Ayurvedic beauty and personal care brands The Ayurveda Co (T.A.C) and Khadi Essentials have ceased operations, following the suspension of their business in July 2025, cofounder Param Bhargava announced on LinkedIn.

The companies have since sold off their assets and entered a formal winding-up process. According to the founders, the brands generated a combined cumulative net revenue of ₹250 crore and catered to around 20 lakh consumers during their operations.

Bhargava attributed the failure largely to an expansion strategy that moved faster than the company’s internal systems and economics could support. He said the business expanded across too many channels and hired senior executives too early, before the underlying organisation was ready to manage the scale.

“We expanded too fast, too wide, & way too many senior folks too early, before the system was ready,” Bhargava said, taking responsibility for decisions that he believes contributed to the eventual shutdown.

He said the founders continued trying to keep the business afloat even as the turnaround became increasingly difficult.

According to Bhargava, the founders mortgaged parental property and did not withdraw salaries for more than a year while attempting to sustain the company. He also said the pressure eventually pushed them beyond their physical and mental limits, resulting in breakdowns.

Founded by Bhargava and Shreedha Singh, The Ayurveda Co was built around the founders’ stated ambition of making Ayurveda more relevant to younger consumers. The company offered products spanning skincare, haircare, natural makeup, wellness and related categories, selling through its own website, online marketplaces and an expanding offline network. The Ayurveda Co was launched in 2021, while the founders had earlier started Khadi Essentials in 2019. 

The business had developed a sizeable omnichannel footprint before shutting down. Bhargava said it had 20 owned stores, more than 800 beauty-advisor counters, 110 operational distributors and over 10,000 consumer touchpoints at its peak. He also said the company had reached around 20 lakh consumers and employed more than 1,000 people across on-roll and off-roll roles at its peak. 

Singh, in a separate post, said The Ayurveda Co had crossed ₹150 crore in annual GMV and built a team of more than 1,000 people. The two figures are not directly comparable with Bhargava’s ₹250 crore net-revenue figure, as GMV represents the gross value of transactions while revenue reflects the company’s recognised sales. 

The company’s financial performance, however, deteriorated sharply even as its reported top line grew. The Ayurveda Co’s revenue from operations rose 66% to ₹59.6 crore in FY24 from about ₹36 crore in FY23, according to financial data sourced from company filings. Its total income, including interest income, was about ₹62 crore. At the same time, its net loss widened more than threefold to about ₹68 crore, while total expenses rose 97% to ₹109.5 crore. 

Several major expense categories increased substantially during FY24. Material costs more than doubled to ₹28.6 crore, advertising expenditure rose 73% to ₹26 crore and employee-benefit expenses increased to ₹15.5 crore. Manpower and recruitment costs added another ₹11.3 crore, highlighting the cost of the company’s rapid expansion. 

The company had attracted significant outside capital during its growth phase. In March 2023, The Ayurveda Co announced a ₹100 crore Series A led by Sixth Sense Ventures, with participation from actor Kajal Aggarwal, startup founders and venture-debt funds. Earlier, its seed round had been led by Wipro Consumer Care Ventures and other investors.

Public funding databases currently record more than $15 million raised across disclosed rounds, including a $3 million seed round and the 2023 financing, although the company’s own latest account gives a much larger cumulative figure. Bhargava said in his shutdown announcement that the business had raised ₹125 crore in venture capital from marquee investors and angels. The difference likely reflects differences in what the founder and public databases count as total funding, including subsequent or differently classified financing. 

The shutdown illustrates the difficulty of scaling consumer brands across both digital and physical channels before unit economics and organisational infrastructure are strong enough to support the expansion. The Ayurveda Co had moved offline relatively early in its life and by 2023 was already operating more than 20 exclusive outlets alongside thousands of retail touchpoints. 

Bhargava said he remains proud of what the team built despite the outcome and apologised to stakeholders who incurred losses. He said the experience had left him with lessons he would approach differently and that he intended to continue building in the health and longevity space. 

The closure of The Ayurveda Co comes after a difficult period for India’s consumer-startup ecosystem, where brands have increasingly faced pressure to balance customer-acquisition spending, offline expansion, inventory and distribution costs with sustainable profitability.