Swagatika Das, Nat Habit

At the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern science stands Swagatika Das, CEO & Co-founder of Nat Habit… a new-age beauty brand that has quietly but powerfully disrupted India’s personal care landscape.

With an academic journey spanning IIT Kharagpur and INSEAD, and professional experience across global corporations, Swagatika brings rare intellectual depth to entrepreneurship. Yet, what truly defines her leadership is conviction: a belief that skincare and haircare should be as fresh, honest, and nourishing as food.

Rooted in a family legacy of Ayurveda and driven by data, R&D, and discipline, Swagatika Das has built Nat Habit as a science-backed, preservative-free ecosystem rather than a trend-led brand. Her approach redefines Ayurveda as a living, evolving science… tested, transparent, and designed for contemporary lifestyles.

As Nat Habit scales with integrity and intent, Swagatika Das emerges as one of the most thoughtful voices shaping the future of conscious beauty, shared here in an exclusive conversation with Sumita Chakraborty, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, TheGlitz.

Over To Swagatika Das, CEO & Co-Founder, Nat Habit

Nat Habit began with a deeply personal spark. Take us back to that moment – what was missing in the beauty industry that made you feel compelled to create something of your own, and how did your family’s Ayurvedic roots shape that first step?

Swagatika Das – Nat Habit was born from a very personal gap I experienced as a consumer. Despite the abundance of “natural” beauty products, I found that most were still heavily processed, preserved, and disconnected from how our bodies truly respond to care. Growing up in a family of doctors, I believed in the importance of ayurveda backed with science and R&D. I realised how far the modern beauty industry had drifted from those roots.

What was missing was freshness, honesty, and respect for the body. Ayurveda taught me that anything you apply on your skin should be as safe and nourishing as food. That belief became the foundation of Nat Habit. The first step wasn’t about launching a brand; it was about recreating what had always worked – fresh, seasonal, ingredient-led formulations, using modern science to make it scalable.

Nat Habit is essentially an attempt to bridge science-backed ayurveda with today’s lifestyles, without diluting either.

You often speak about treating skin and hair like food. What experiences – personal or professional – cemented your belief that freshness and chemical-free care weren’t just ideals, but non-negotiables?

Swagatika Das – This belief came from both – lived experiences and professional understanding. On a personal level, I saw how 100 % natural & fresh ayurveda delivered results without side effects, something store-bought products rarely matched. Professionally, my exposure to data and formulation science made it clear that many ingredients lose potency over time and that preservatives often compensate for degraded actives rather than enhance efficacy.

If we don’t eat stale or overly preserved food for health, why should we accept it for skin and hair, which absorb far more than we realise? That question stayed with me.

Freshness isn’t a marketing claim for us; it’s a functional advantage. When ingredients are processed minimally and used closer to their natural state, their efficacy is significantly higher. Over time, this conviction became non-negotiable. It influenced everything from shorter shelf lives to building in-house manufacturing.

At Nat Habit, freshness is not a trend. It’s the difference between care that merely sits on the skin and care that actually works.

Nat Habit’s growth has been anything but conventional. At what point did you realise this wasn’t just a niche idea, but a movement waiting to scale? 

Swagatika Das – The shift happened when we saw consumers not just buying once but returning repeatedly and advocating for us. People weren’t just using Nat Habit; they were changing habits. They began questioning labels, shelf lives, and ingredients across categories.

That’s when it became clear this wasn’t niche. It was pent-up demand. Consumers were ready to unlearn years of conditioning around instant results and long shelf lives—if given transparency and trust.

The scale didn’t come from aggressive marketing but from education and word-of-mouth. When customers started explaining our philosophy better than we could, we knew we were building a movement, not just a brand.

Growth, for Nat Habit, has been organic and belief driven. That’s also why it’s sustainable.

In a market trained to trust long shelf lives and instant results, what were the biggest mental barriers you had to break – both for consumers and within your own team, when you insisted on preservative-free, freshly made formulations? What were the challenges you faced in creating preservative-free, freshly made formulations

Swagatika Das – The biggest barrier was mindset. Consumers were trained to equate long shelf life with safety and instant results with effectiveness. We had to gently challenge that narrative, without fear-mongering by educating them on how freshness works.

Internally, the challenge was even tougher. Preservative-free formulations demand precision, speed, and discipline across sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics. There is no room for complacency. Every batch matters.

From stability testing to cold-chain logistics to shorter production cycles, everything had to be re-engineered. It was complex, expensive, and often slower, but conviction kept us going.

The biggest challenge wasn’t formulation, it was consistency at scale. But we believed that if Ayurveda could survive centuries without preservatives, it could certainly thrive today with the support of technology.

You built an in-house, tech-enabled R&D and manufacturing ecosystem when most D2C brands outsource. Was this decision driven more by science, control, or conviction, and how has it shaped Nat Habit’s credibility today?

Swagatika Das – The decision evolved over time, shaped by how deeply we wanted to engage with the product itself. As we worked with fresh, natural formulations, it became clear that quality and outcomes couldn’t be separated from the process that creates them. While outsourcing offers speed, it often limits scientific rigour, traceability, and learning velocity. For us, owning the science was essential.

Building an in-house, tech-enabled R&D and manufacturing ecosystem gave us end-to-end control over ingredient integrity, formulation stability, batch-level quality, and continuous improvement. It allowed our teams to test, iterate, and validate in real time rather than rely on static specifications.

Over time, this choice has shaped Nat Habit’s credibility in a very tangible way. It enables us to stand behind our claims, respond quickly to consumer feedback, and scale without compromising efficacy. More importantly, it reinforces that Nat Habit is built on depth and discipline , not just storytelling, but substance.

Ayurveda today is often reduced to a buzzword. How did you ensure Nat Habit practises Ayurveda as a living science, rooted in research, rigour, and results, rather than romantic nostalgia?

Swagatika Das – Ayurveda becomes a buzzword when it is frozen in the past. We see it as a living science. From day one, our intent at Nat Habit was not to romanticise tradition, but to interrogate it. Every Ayurvedic principle we work with is treated as a hypothesis – studied, tested, and refined through modern research and formulation science.

We invest deeply in ingredient-level understanding: sourcing raw materials responsibly, preserving actives through fresh formulations, and validating outcomes through efficacy testing and consumer trials. If a ritual or ingredient does not deliver measurable results, it does not make its way into our products no matter how popular the narrative may be.

Equally important is how we communicate. We are careful to replace vague claims with clear explanations – what an ingredient does, how it works, and why it has been chosen. Transparency builds trust far more than nostalgia ever can.

For us, practising Ayurveda responsibly means respecting its intelligence, holding it to modern standards of proof, and ensuring it delivers visible, repeatable results for today’s consumer.

Your journey spans IIT Kharagpur, INSEAD, global corporates, and entrepreneurship. How do data, instinct, tradition, and lived experience come together when you make leadership decisions today?

Swagatika Das – My leadership decisions today sit at the intersection of data, instinct, tradition, and lived experience. My journey at IIT Kharagpur and INSEAD taught me to respect structure, data, and first principles, thinking. Numbers bring discipline, they help remove bias, test assumptions, and scale decisions responsibly. For me, data is the starting point, never the end.

Instinct comes from lived experience years spent building teams, launching products, and watching how consumers behave beyond dashboards and reports. Some of the most critical decisions I’ve made came when the data was still evolving, but patterns felt unmistakable.

Tradition plays a quieter yet powerful role. At Nat Habit, we work with rituals and ingredients that have existed in Indian homes for generations. That cultural memory carries signal what has endured usually has a reason. My role as a leader is to listen to that wisdom, then subject it to modern science and validation.

Ultimately, leadership is about synthesis. Data keeps me honest, instinct keeps me agile, tradition keeps us grounded, and lived experience helps me balance speed with responsibility. 

As Nat Habit looks to the future, do you see the next phase of growth coming from deeper Indian roots or global expansion, and what responsibility do you believe culturally rooted brands carry as they scale?

Swagatika Das – As we look ahead, Nat Habit’s next phase of growth will come from going deeper into India before going wider globally. India isn’t a market for us… our design system. Our formulations, rituals, and ingredient intelligence are deeply rooted in Indian households and regional wisdom, and there is still enormous headroom to serve Indian consumers better with higher efficacy, stronger trust, and more scientific validation.

That said, we do see global relevance , not as “exporting India,” but as offering the world a new standard of natural beauty that is evidence-backed, modern, and uncompromising on performance. Global expansion, when it happens, will be an extension of our philosophy, not a dilution of it.

Culturally rooted brands carry a serious responsibility as they scale. Our job is to honour it through rigour by subjecting age-old practices to modern science, transparency, and accountability. As we grow, we believe it’s critical to protect the integrity of our ingredients, the truth in our claims, and the trust of the consumer.

At scale, culture should not become a marketing story… it should remain a product truth. That is the standard we hold ourselves to as we build Nat Habit for the long term.