Conventional Indian cures as soon as dismissed as outdated at the moment are getting back from the West—rebranded, bottled, and offered again at eye-watering markups, sparking contemporary calls to reclaim cultural identification and heritage.
In a LinkedIn put up, Aarti Sheth Cooper, co-founder of a Mumbai-based branding firm, slammed the worldwide wellness business for what she calls the “colonial rebranding” of Indian well being traditions.
“What your dadi referred to as a nuskha… is now sitting on a luxurious wellness shelf for ₹1,200,” she wrote, pointing to turmeric milk, amla juice, and ashwagandha as prime examples.
Cooper criticized the sample of Indian elements being exported, repackaged overseas, and reintroduced into Indian markets as premium wellness merchandise.
“Haldi doodh,” she famous, “is now referred to as golden milk at Starbucks,” the place a ₹20 house treatment transforms right into a ₹500 café pattern. Amla juice? As soon as a family staple, it’s now a high-priced “tremendous shot” in elite shops like Erewhon.
Even Ayurvedic staples like neem paste, shatavari, and makhana have adopted this path—dismissed domestically, then celebrated as soon as they put on worldwide labels.
“For many years, we’ve mocked the nuskhas,” Cooper lamented. “Now we clap once they come again foreign-branded.”
She warned of the long-term affect of outsourcing validation: “If we don’t, another person will… after which our identification gained’t really feel like ours anymore.”
One person echoed the sentiment: “If we maintain ready for the West to validate it, we’ll maintain shopping for again our legacy at a markup.”
Cooper referred to as for a shift—not simply in notion however in company. “It’s time we cease ready for approval and begin shaping our personal legacy.”
