Sisters Shaz Rajashekar and Kik Chaudhuri took their school holidays from Memorial, Houston, to visit their family in the lush Himalayan foothills of West Bengal, India. They recall idyllic summers indulging in Ayurvedic hair-oil treatments, a centuries-old tradition, with their grandmother firmly massaging homemade hair oil into their scalps. Making the oil was a ritual in itself. Their grandmother would pick amla berries, hibiscus flowers, holy basil, and moringa leaves from the garden, mix them with fenugreek seeds, and steep the plant in bhringaraj, coconut, or sesame oil. The sisters grew up loving these ingredients and rituals, and in 2020 they founded their haircare brand, Shaz&Kiks, to share them with the Western world. Now the company is one of the first South Asian beauty lines to be sold at Sephora. “Who knows more about hair care than South Asian women?” Chaudhuri muses.
Rajashekar and Chaudhuri returned to Texas in 2018 after spending several years working in Dubai and New York, respectively. During their time away from home, they noticed a trend: the rise of Ayurveda-based beauty products and wellness practices in the U.S. and abroad. Ayurveda, which means “science of life” in Sanskrit, is often viewed as an alternative medicine in the Western world. Its principles include caring for the mind, body, and soul through rituals that are both preventive and curative, and are based on the idea that treatment is not limited to medication alone.
Ayurvedic products are typically homemade, so the sisters were surprised to see these formulas bottled and sold to the public. To make matters worse, Rajashekar and Chaudhuri noticed a lack of representation from South Asian communities among brands promoting the use of Ayurvedic spices and plants. “We really wanted to create a space and really pay tribute to the stories, the ingredients, the people who grew these ingredients, and bring them to new customers in new ways,” explains Chaudhuri.
Shaz & Kiks couldn’t have launched at a better time. The rise of “clean beauty” and consumer interest in ingredient transparency aligned with the tenets of Ayurveda. But the founders knew they needed to innovate to make the traditional practice accessible to a broader demographic. Rajashekar, who now lives in Austin, admits that she hated her summertime hair-oil experience, even though she loved the results. So they set out to formulate and refine their first product, a creamy scalp and hair pre-wash mask (designed to be massaged into a dry scalp before your regular shampoo) in their own kitchen. With Indian ingredients like amla, moringa, and neem, the pre-wash has the benefits of a hair oil, but its formulation mimics a process that modern consumers can understand. “We decided to take the concept of a hair oil and make the experience a little more familiar to the Western world,” says Rajashekar.
Rajashekar and Chaudhri apply the science of Ayurveda to hair care in three ways, resulting in products that focus on increasing blood flow, reducing inflammation, and balancing oil production. “We would never say there’s one solution to hair loss, or dry scalp. At the core of Ayurveda is its holistic approach,” says Chaudhri. The products contain more than 25 herbs, botanical oils, and extracts that, when used in different ways, can have benefits beyond hair care. Ashwagandha, tamarind, and spearmint, found in the Balancing Clay Hair Cleanser and Moringa Anti-Break Peptide Serum, are also often used to treat a variety of health issues, from stress to indigestion. Kokum butter, an ingredient in Nourishing Naram Conditioner, is extracted from the kokum tree, native to India, whose juice is a digestive stimulant often consumed during hot summers. Turmeric, an ingredient in the new shampoo, has been cultivated and used in South Asia for more than 4,000 years and is thought to relieve arthritis pain.
Other than sourcing ingredients from local farms in India, all of Shaz & Kiks’ production is done in Texas, which the sisters credit for the company’s success. Each product takes about 12 months to develop, including multiple meetings with the team’s lab and warehouse in Dallas, where Chaudhuri is also based. The Texas beauty entrepreneur community was especially supportive, the pair said. They met many members of Texas’ burgeoning product community through an Austin-based product accelerator program, and connected with other beauty vendors through a packaging broker in the DFW area. Rajashekar recalls learning about the challenges of overseas production from many of their “founder friends” whose labs and manufacturers are based in Europe, so the sisters were grateful that everything worked out in their “backyard.”
But not everyone is so welcoming: the duo sometimes receive xenophobic comments online about their products’ “natural” scents. “Just because we get a few comments saying ‘it smells like an Indian kitchen,’ we would never give our products a completely different scent that doesn’t suit them,” says Rajashekar.
Rajashekhar and Chaudhuri’s grandmothers have passed away, but their mother is the one who initially tests all the formulas. The family commitment is one of the things they love about their jobs. “We wanted to spend more time as sisters and do something that was really meaningful and impactful to us, and for both of us that meant something rooted in our traditions and culture,” Chaudhuri explains. “We saw so many people from all over the world coming to Houston and celebrating their roots in different ways. It subconsciously becomes a part of who we are. After all these decades, we’re creating something that’s rooted in our traditions.”
