My name is Arush Chopra and I am the CEO and co-founder of Just Herbs- a line of pure, bespoke and Ayurvedic results-driven skin and hair care made from certified organic and wildcrafted ingredients collected from across India.

The Just Herbs journey began when my mother, Dr Neena Chopra, an award-winning biochemist, started mixing herbs, plants and flowers to make lotions and potions at our family-owned garden lab in Mohali in northern India.

In spite of being a gold medalist at university, Mom never really got a chance to apply the knowledge she had gained in her work or in her daily life.

She would often say, “There has to be more to life than a mundane 9-5!”

After much contemplation and a final cathartic moment, the day came. She quit her banking job to study Ayurveda, the subject she had felt a calling towards all her life. This was a time when words such as ‘organic’, ‘natural’ and ‘ayurvedic’ were not as popular as they are today and there was no real market for Ayurvedic products in India.

Driven by her passion alone, she immersed herself in Ayurvedic texts such as Bhavprakash, Charak Samhita and began unravelling the similarities and dichotomies between western science and traditional Indian Ayurvedic wisdom.

I grew up watching my mother constantly come up with new formulations that would address some or the other skin or hair related issues. The efficacy of these products was proven to me whenever I would gift them to friends or relatives.

“This stuff is so amazing, Arush! Why can’t we buy them anywhere?” was what I’d often hear.