Pre-Launch · Invite-Only · Launching Q3/Q4 2026 Reserve your spot → DPIIT Recognised Startup
Hospital corridor with warm amber light
Our Story

Born in a
NICU waiting room.

“We just wanted something we could say yes to without a second thought.”

By Janani & Karthik, Founders
01
Five days old. NICU. Phototherapy.

Our son was five days old when his bilirubin levels crossed the safe range. He needed 360° phototherapy — two full days under the lamps. When we finally held him again, his skin had changed completely. Darker. Dry. Tight. Flaking.

The phototherapy had done its job, but his skin had taken the full force of it.

We asked everyone. The nurses. The paediatrician. Other parents. The answer was always “moisturise him.”

Fine. With what, exactly?

“We weren’t asking for something exotic. We just wanted something we could trust completely on a five-day-old’s skin.”
Newborn's dry skin with parent's hand nearby
02
Products existed. That wasn’t the problem.

There were products. Shelves full of them. The mass-market brands had sulfates, mineral oil, synthetic fragrance — ingredients flagged in dermatological literature, still in baby washes because they’re cheap.

The premium imported options were expensive and formulated for Western winters, Western soft water. A baby’s skin is the same everywhere — what differs is what it’s exposed to. We had no real way to know if these products were designed for Indian climatic conditions or just priced to feel trustworthy.

The Ayurvedic ones felt closest culturally. But the botanicals on the label were often at concentrations so small they couldn’t possibly be doing much. Good instinct. Incomplete science.

“It wasn’t that nothing existed. It was that nothing existed that we could say yes to without a second thought.”
03
Then the diaper rash arrived.

A persistent diaper rash that kept coming back. Products for rash protection that contained ingredients we’d already decided we didn’t want. Creams with botanicals at trace concentrations. And always the question of whether a formula designed for a different climate could really account for the particular cruelty of an Indian summer diaper area.

That feeling — close but not quite — turned out to be the feeling that builds a brand.

A parent's hand resting gently on their baby — the moment of care
04
Not just for our son.

Every Indian parent searching for something made for this. For India’s conditions. For a baby born in Chennai in June, not a Western city in December. Where the Ayurveda on the label is actually in the bottle, at a concentration that does something.

That’s what Tenderma is. Not a gap in the market. A gap in our lives — one we suspect lives in yours too.

“We built what we needed. We’re sharing it with every family who needed it too.”
The Audit

We read the labels so you don’t have to.

Before we formulated a single product, we audited what was already on Indian shelves — line by line, ingredient by ingredient. Here’s what we found.

19
Brands audited
Every meaningful baby skincare brand on Indian shelves — from mass-market legacy to clinical imports to pure Ayurveda.
5
Clusters mapped
Mass-market, Clinical Imports, Clean/Natural D2C, Pure Ayurveda, and Science+Ayurveda Fusion — plotted on science depth vs. botanical depth.
140+
SKUs reviewed
Full INCI lists catalogued. Cross-checked against dermatology-flagged ingredients and Indian climate requirements.
Five clusters of Indian baby-care products, analysed side by side

The five clusters

Mass-market legacy brands — the products in every Indian pharmacy for the last four decades. High household penetration, low ingredient sophistication, formulation rooted in mineral oil, petrolatum, and synthetic fragrance. Zero modern actives.
Premium imported clinical brands — dermatologist-recommended Western imports. Excellent ceramide science and evidence-backed actives, but the hydration backbone is still mineral oil or dimethicone, and there is no integration of Indian botanicals or climate-specific formulation.
Clean/natural D2C brands — the post-2015 Indian startup wave. Cleaner labels, stronger marketing, and improving ingredient literacy. A few have adopted newer actives like Pentavitin or hyaluronic acid, but standardised Ayurveda is absent and climate-specific formulation is rare.
Pure Ayurveda & heritage brands — strong botanical lineage, beautiful storytelling. The concerns we found were real: ingredient lists with 19+ herbs all at trace levels (herb-dumping); reliance on oils the Indian Academy of Paediatrics cautions against for infants (most notably mustard oil); and preservative choices that don’t hold up in Indian humidity.
Emerging science-Ayurveda fusion entrants — a handful of brands combining imported ceramides with Indian positioning, but the Ayurvedic side is marketing language, not standardised extracts. Tenderma is the only brand in our audit sitting at the full intersection — clinical-grade science (triple ceramides, niacinamide, colloidal oatmeal, Pentavitin, Aquaxyl) and standardised Ayurveda (azadirachtin from neem, faradiol from calendula, glabridin from liquorice, manjistha, tulsi) together, inside a six-pathway barrier-science framework built specifically for Indian babies.
Reading the market audit — the numbers that told us what was missing

What we also found

76% of mass-market Indian baby washes contain sulfates (SLS/SLES) — the same surfactants dermatologists recommend avoiding on adult sensitive skin, let alone infant skin.
68% use synthetic fragrance — among the most commonly reported allergens in paediatric contact dermatitis literature, alongside metals and preservatives.
14 of 19 brands list “Ayurvedic” or botanical ingredients but disclose no standardisation. In most cases, the concentration sits below the threshold where clinical literature demonstrates an effect — storytelling over science.
0 brands in our audit formulated explicitly for Indian climate variables — hard-water TDS, monsoon humidity, 40°C+ summers, PM 2.5 pollution load. Most are reformulations of Western or Japanese baseline products.
4.3× pricing variance across products with near-identical INCI lists. Premium pricing was not correlated with formulation quality in our analysis.
The line we hold — ingredients we include and ingredients we refuse
The Tenderma Principles

Seven things we will not do.

01
We will not use sulfates, parabens, mineral oil, synthetic fragrance, or harsh alcohols.
Not in trace amounts. Not under alternate INCI names. Not ever. These are non-negotiable exclusions.
02
We will not use an Ayurvedic botanical at a level that doesn’t do the work.
Neem at a trace level is marketing. We use standardised extracts at effective levels, verified by our manufacturing partner — not sprinkled in for label appeal. If it’s on the label, it’s in the bottle at a concentration the clinical literature actually supports.
03
We will not formulate “universal” products.
A baby’s skin in 82% Mumbai humidity is not the same context as a baby’s skin in 30% Leh dryness. We design for the environment, not the average.
04
We will not sell individual products as if they work in isolation.
Baby skincare is a system. Every product we ship is designed to work with every other product we ship. We build routines, not one-offs.
05
We will not claim anything we can’t cite.
Every clinical claim links to a peer-reviewed source — Indian research first, wherever it exists. If we can’t cite it, we don’t say it.
06
We will not hide what’s in the bottle.
Full INCI lists published on every product page. For each key ingredient: what it does, what it replaces, and the clinical source behind the claim. No “proprietary blend” theatre — transparent in function, protected in formulation.
07
We will not compromise on either product quality or unit economics.
A brand that can’t sustain itself can’t protect your baby’s skin for the next ten years. We build with intent — balancing uncompromising formulation with sustainable pricing.

Who’s building this

Janani Rajeswari, Co-Founder Tenderma
Janani Rajeswari
Co-Founder · Finance & Operations
CPA with financial auditing experience. The parent who started reading labels first.
Karthik Raju, Co-Founder Tenderma
Karthik Raju
Co-Founder · Product & Science
10+ years in quality systems at a global MNC. Built Tenderma’s R&D framework from scratch.

Gentle care. Real results.

We’re launching Q3/Q4 2026 with five baby skincare products — designed for India’s climate, formulated on science you can verify, and priced to make sense. Reserve your routine and we’ll reach out personally as we approach launch.

Reserve your spot →