I did not start Mayskin because I saw a market opportunity. I started it because I was tired of my own skin not having a brand that understood it.
My name is Mehr Broca. I am the founder of Mayskin. And this is not a polished origin story about spotting a gap in the market and raising funding to fill it. This is a story about sensitive skin, damaged barriers, products that did not work, and the frustration of knowing that skincare in India could be so much better than what was available.
Growing Up With Skin That Reacted to Everything
My skin has been sensitive for as long as I can remember. And when I say sensitive, I do not mean the kind of sensitivity where you get a little redness once in a while. I mean the kind where your skin reacts to almost everything you put on it. Breakouts from products that claimed to be gentle. Irritation from formulas that worked perfectly for everyone else. Acne, dark spots, ingrown hair, keratosis pilaris, stretch marks. My skin had its own agenda, and it did not care what the product label promised.
Growing up, I loved sports. Swimming, badminton, anything that got me moving. Swimming in particular meant I was tanned for most of the year. As a kid, I did not think about it. I was too busy living. But as I got older, the way my skin looked started to matter more, not because of vanity, but because I could see that something was genuinely wrong. My skin was reactive, inflamed, and no product seemed to help. In fact, most products made it worse.
I stopped experimenting with makeup early on because I learned the hard way that every new product was a gamble. One wrong foundation, one wrong primer, and I would be dealing with a fresh round of breakouts for weeks. Even today, I keep makeup to a minimum because the risk-reward equation simply does not work for skin like mine.
The Idea That Started in a Second-Year Engineering Classroom
The first spark came in 2018. I was in my second year of engineering, sitting around with a group of friends, talking about what we wanted to do after college. Everyone had ideas. Some wanted to go corporate. Some wanted to start something.
I knew I wanted to build something of my own. And the beauty space had always fascinated me. Initially, I was drawn to cosmetics. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I did not actually know cosmetics well. I had barely used them because my skin could not handle them. What I did know, deeply and personally, was skincare. I had been living with problematic skin my entire life. I understood the frustration. I knew what did not work. And I had a growing sense of what should exist but did not.
The problem was clear to me even then: most skincare brands in India were either mass-market products with generic formulations, or international brands that were expensive, hard to find, and formulated for climates and skin types that had nothing to do with India. There was nothing in between. Nothing that combined real science with an understanding of Indian skin, Indian weather, and Indian skin concerns.
But I was 19 years old and in the middle of an engineering degree. I was not ready to start a company. So I made a mental note and kept moving.
COVID, an MBA, and 18 Months of Figuring Things Out
By 2020, COVID had changed everything. My engineering degree was disrupted. The world was uncertain. But one thing became clearer during lockdown: I was going to build this brand. The question was not if, but when and how.
I knew I needed to learn more about business before jumping in. The kind of company I wanted to build was very different from the businesses I had grown up seeing around me. So I decided to pursue an MBA in finance, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
During my second year of MBA, I started working on Mayskin seriously. And this is where the story stops being romantic and starts being real.
I did not come from a beauty background. I had no industry connections. No family in the business. No mentor who had done this before. Every single step had to be figured out from scratch.
Finding the right manufacturer took months. I visited multiple facilities. Some were not willing to do custom formulations for a small, new brand. They wanted me to pick pre-made formulations off the shelf, slap a label on them, and sell. That was never going to work for me. I did not want to build another brand that used the same formulations as everyone else.
People tried to scam me along the way. I learned to ask better questions, verify claims, and trust my instincts. Packaging was another maze. Should we source from India, China, Korea? Each option had trade-offs in quality, cost, and lead time. Every decision felt consequential because I was building on a limited budget with no room for expensive mistakes.
The whole process, from idea to launch, took almost two years. We finally launched Mayskin on January 27, 2024.
The Moment Everything Clicked: Barrier Care First
While I was building the brand, something was happening with my own skin that changed the direction of everything.
During the skincare boom that happened in India around 2020 and 2021, I did what everyone was doing. I started layering actives. Niacinamide in the morning. Vitamin C after that. AHA/BHA at night. Retinol on alternate days. I was following every influencer recommendation, using every trending ingredient, and expecting my skin to glow.
Instead, my skin fell apart.
It became drier, more reactive, more inflamed. I was breaking out worse than before. Products that used to be fine suddenly stung when I applied them. My skin felt tight and papery one moment and oily the next. Nothing made sense.
I visited multiple dermatologists. And the diagnosis was consistent across all of them: my skin barrier was severely damaged. All those actives, all that layering, all those products that were supposed to fix my skin had actually stripped away the protective layer that keeps skin healthy.
The dermatologists explained something that should have been obvious but was not talked about in any of the skincare content I had been consuming: you have to fix the barrier first. Before you target dark spots, before you treat acne, before you exfoliate, before anything else, the barrier needs to be intact. Because without a healthy barrier, no active ingredient can work properly, and most will make things worse.
That was the moment that defined Mayskin's entire philosophy. Barrier care first. Everything else second.
Why Single-Ingredient Products Were Not the Answer
Around the same time, I noticed a trend taking over the Indian skincare market. Single-ingredient products. "10% Niacinamide." "2% Salicylic Acid." "20% Vitamin C." Each product targeting one specific concern with one specific active.
I understood the appeal. They simplified skincare. They made it easy to understand what you were putting on your face. And the brands building these products were doing really well.
But there was a problem that nobody was talking about.
Our skin is not simple. Indian skin, dealing with humidity, pollution, UV exposure year-round, and a genetic predisposition to pigmentation, has multiple concerns happening simultaneously. Using a single ingredient to address one concern means you need five or six different products to address five or six concerns. Which brings you right back to the layering problem that damaged my barrier in the first place.
What if, instead of six simple products, you had one smart one? A formula that combined multiple actives, each chosen to complement the others, working through different pathways, all balanced so the formula stays gentle while being genuinely effective?
That became Mayskin's second guiding principle: multifunctional formulations. Every product should do more than one thing, so your routine can be shorter without sacrificing results.
What "Made for Indian Skin" Actually Means to Us
Every brand says their products are "for Indian skin." We wanted to actually mean it.
For us, formulating for Indian skin means specific things:
- Textures that work in humidity. If a product feels heavy or greasy in Mumbai summer, it does not matter how good the ingredients are. Nobody will use it consistently.
- Ingredients stable in Indian heat. Some actives degrade when stored in warm conditions. Our formulations are tested for stability in the temperatures our customers actually live in, not in a European lab at 20 degrees.
- Addressing the concerns Indian skin actually has. PIH (post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation) is the number one pigmentation concern in India, not wrinkles. Tanning from year-round UV exposure is a daily reality. Barrier damage from hard water and pollution is constant. These are the problems we formulate around.
- No white cast. This sounds basic, but for sunscreens on Indian skin tones, it is non-negotiable. We test on Indian skin, not on Fitzpatrick I-II arms in a European study.
We also made a decision early on to source ingredients that are genuinely different from what everyone else was using. A lot of our actives are imported, clinically backed, and new to the Indian market. Not because imported is better by default, but because we found that the specific complexes, ferment filtrates, and botanical extracts we wanted to use simply were not available from domestic ingredient suppliers at the quality we needed.
If we used the same trending ingredients that every other brand uses, we would be another bottle on the shelf with a different label. That is not what Mayskin is here to be.
What We Believe (and What We Do Not)
Mayskin is a science-first brand. That means a few things we feel strongly about:
We do not believe in ghar ke nuske as skincare solutions. Home remedies have their place, but they are not substitutes for properly formulated, tested products. Rubbing a potato on your face is not the same as using a clinically formulated extract of that potato in a serum. We respect traditional knowledge, but we build on it with modern science, not the other way around.
We do not believe chemicals are bad. The fear-mongering around "chemicals" in skincare is one of the most damaging trends in the Indian beauty market. Water is a chemical. Glycerin is a chemical. Niacinamide is a chemical. The word "chemical" tells you nothing about safety. What matters is which chemicals, at what concentration, in what combination, and how they have been tested. We use clinically backed ingredients at safe, effective concentrations. Every product goes through rigorous testing. That is how you ensure safety, not by slapping "chemical-free" on the label.
We believe skincare should not stop at the face. Your body has skin too. It faces the same challenges, the same UV exposure, the same barrier damage. It deserves the same level of care, the same quality of ingredients, the same scientific rigour. That is why Mayskin is expanding beyond face care into body care and eye care.
We believe in less but better. Four to five well-formulated, multifunctional products can do the work of a 10-step routine. You do not need 10 bottles. You need the right bottles.
Where We Are Now, and Where We Are Going
Mayskin launched on January 27, 2024, with a small lineup built around the barrier-first philosophy. Every product was formulated to cleanse, treat, hydrate, or protect without compromising the skin barrier. The response from customers has been the most validating part of this entire journey.
People write to us saying their skin stopped reacting to everything for the first time. That our sunscreen is the first one they do not dread applying. That our moisturiser works in Mumbai humidity where everything else feels heavy. That our serum actually made a visible difference in their dark spots.
We are not a large company. We do not have the marketing budgets of the brands you see on every billboard. But what we do have is a genuine understanding of Indian skin, born from personal experience, and a refusal to cut corners on formulation just because it would be cheaper or faster.
Mayskin is growing. New products are coming. The same philosophy stays: barrier care first, multifunctional always, formulated specifically for the skin and climate we actually live in. Not adapted from a global formula. Built from scratch, for here.
This is just the beginning.
