A new and first brand inspired by traditional Indian medicine, with recipes dating back several millennia, has just made its debut at Sephora: Sahajan, which means “instinct” in Hindi, because that is precisely what Lisa Mattan followed by launching its products.
And we haven’t heard the last of it. As proof, its pretty brown vials with a unique name and distinctive packaging, which can also be found at Étiket in Montreal, have been adopted by large hotel chains, and not the least: Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis , W, etc.
In stores, we’re snapping it up. Barely launched, the three flagship products – a nourishing cream (based on gotu kola, or tiger grass), a cleansing oil (with moringa) and a lightening mask (with turmeric) – were out of stock.
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY SAHAJAN
Sahajan’s flagship products are the cleansing oil, nourishing cream and brightening mask.
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY SAHAJAN
Sahajan’s flagship products are the cleansing oil, nourishing cream and brightening mask.
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY SAHAJAN
Sahajan’s flagship products are the cleansing oil, nourishing cream and brightening mask.
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Quite a journey for the Torontonian, daughter of Indian immigrants, originally an expert in pharmaceutical marketing, then a consultant, converted here into a dynamic entrepreneur of Ayurvedic beauty products, to boot.
Except that it’s more of a return to basics. In a telephone interview, the founder explains that she has always been immersed in natural products. As a child, at home, to treat a pimple, we applied a turmeric paste mixed with a little rose water. To style her hair, Lisa Mattan has always used oils, whether coconut or sesame. This was self-evident, long before it was fashionable.
This explains that ? Lisa Mattan has quietly moved away from her roots over the years to work in the world of pharmaceuticals and adopt the beauty (read: chemical) products of the day for her personal routine. But 10 years ago, on her way home from work, she came across her daughter, then as tall as three apples, all smeared with her various products. “It was adorable,” she remembers, “but I thought: what are all these ingredients going to do to her little baby skin? » Spontaneously, she suggested that he instead have fun with her family oils, freshly brought back from India by her parents during a recent stay. “And that’s when I realized I trusted them! […] And it got me thinking. »
If my beauty products aren’t good enough for her, my beauty products definitely aren’t good enough for me either!
Lisa Mattan, founder of Sahajan
A little research later and Lisa Mattan realized this: “What I had taken to be family traditions were in fact deeply rooted in Ayurvedic medicine. » This “science of life” also advocates “balance”, she popularizes on the other end of the line. Hence the quite spontaneous idea of combining these ancestral recipes with modern science. To do this, Lisa Mattan immediately hired a chemist, collaborated with doctors in India to ensure the authenticity of the approach and even launched third-party clinical tests on her formulas, a first in the world of products. natural products in general, and in Ayurvedic products in particular, she points out. In 2015, the brand, although niche at the time, was launched. Less than 10 years later, here she is in one of the largest beauty product chains in the country.