TAGS: Sustainability / Natural Cosmetics Decorative Cosmetics
An Interview with Jashan Bhumkar, Company Director at Soujanya
Following its ‘Adding life to color’ motto, Soujanya, the family-owned multinational player in the space of colorants, has the customer at the center of its philosophy. To be closer to each and every client, Soujanya extended its presence in over 50 countries across the globe, seamlessly addressing the needs and challenges faced by the cosmetics and personal care market.
Let us hear directly from Jashan Bhumkar, Company Director at Soujanya where he shares his insights on customized color solutions in the cosmetics and personal care industry keeping customer-specific needs in mind thus maintaining a greener approach.
#1 - Soujanya has an important contribution to the advancements in the cosmetics and personal care market. What drives your commitment?
From the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, color is everywhere, and we at
Soujanya are at the forefront of this very exciting space. Present in 50 countries across 6 continents today, we bring color to millions of lives every day.
This realization instills in us an unmatched sense of passion and purpose, which is the main driving force behind our commitment. We love making products more beautiful, and more so
making the process of coloring much easier for our customers. The latter has been the underlying inspiration for a lot of our initiatives in the personal care & cosmetics space such as:
- Developing liquid colors to replace hazardous and dusting powder dyes,
- Delivering colors with batch-to-batch consistency so that there are zero shade rejections in our customers’ factories, and
- They save huge amount of time they would otherwise spend in shade matching.
#2 - You mentioned that Soujanya is a family-owned multinational company. What advantages bring this unique positioning to your customers?
As a multinational company, our systems and processes are professional and sacrosanct, allowing us to operate smoothly on a global scale. At the same time, our organization’s culture is deeply rooted in the core values embedded in us right from the start. My grandfather Late Mr. C J Bhumkar founded Soujanya about 40 years ago. My mother, Priyamvada Bhumkar (Managing Director) has led the company to greater heights; our flagship unit in Mumbai, Asia’s largest color manufacturing plant was set up under her leadership.
The biggest feature of being a family-owned company is that we inherently keep things real. We are not a faceless corporation simply providing products, but rather are real people pursuing a real purpose, where our passion and expertise show through meaningful, genuine and engaging interactions. The advantages are endless, and relate to what I’d like to call “
returns on relationships”.
By developing strong ties with customers based on values and trust, we are able to position ourselves as a natural extension of their business, or rather as a color division within their own business. Moreover, customers trust us with formulations, sharing which would be a very sensitive matter. For example, if ten of the top companies from a particular industry (say cosmetics or detergents) are all sourcing from us, they have full trust that their formulations and technology are being safeguarded and secured in the best way whatsoever.
#3 - Can you tell us more about your cosmetics and personal care portfolio, customized solutions, and how clients are benefiting from them?
We offer an extensive portfolio of liquid colors (preparations of pigments and dyes) that cover a plethora of home & personal care, and cosmetic products, under the “AURA” series.
- Auratone™ is our range for water-based applications such as soaps and water-based cosmetics.
- Auratint™ is our novel liquid preparation of dyes for various cleaning and home care applications.
- Aurablush™ colors on the other hand impart vibrant colors to lip and nail products, and beautiful pastel hues to oil-based cosmetics.
All of these products are non-toxic and heavy metal-free.
There are additionally some offerings unique to Soujanya that are based on our formulation and process expertise. For example, we are one of the few companies that are able to make a stable, small-particle-sized dispersion of carbon black, known to be an extremely difficult material to stabilize. This enables us to offer one of the most superior jet blacks in the world (we call it
Super Jet Black), for applications such as mascara. On the other hand, we offer an optical bright white (we call it
Super White) preparation of micronized, pharma-grade titanium dioxide for various skin care applications, particularly sunscreen.
More than products, we offer solutions that relieve customers of the various challenges they face related to color. With our ability to offer custom shades, for example, customers no longer need to blend 2 or 3 pigments or dyes to achieve the shade; they simply procure the custom-blended shade from us, and need to then maintain inventory of only that shade.
#4 - How your innovative solutions are providing exciting opportunities for the customers?
A very unique aspect of our business is our Color Lab, a technology unit engaged solely in the activity of shade development, that is
creating shades by blending basic colors (for example, a unique pink can be made by combining red and white, with a possible undertone of yellow). Indeed, in the last one year, Soujanya’s color lab developed and released across different customers, more than 1 million shades!
This service presents many exciting opportunities for our customers. In just a matter of days, we are able to develop unique customized shades that enable our customers to bring personal care products to the market quickly. On the cosmetics front, we are able to create a library of hundreds of shades for makeup (foundation, BB cream, lipstick) and nail paint, enabling our customers to keep an inventory of only a handful of basic colors, and then simply blend them in the ratios given by us in their factory.
Moreover, with the installation of a metered dosing system connected to a software, it is possible to do the blending of shades in an automated manner, and because
our colorants are consistent, the shade will be the same every single time. For the added convenience of our customers, we also offer this entire shade development service as a “Mobile Color Lab”, where our expert color chemists can station themselves in customers’ labs or plants with portable spectrophotometric equipment, and within just a few days develop an entire shade library.
Soujanya's Dedicated Color Lab & Technical Support#5 - You talked a lot about sustainability and at Soujanya you are saying ‘We love all colors, but green is one of our favorites.’ Can you please detail?
Sustainability permeates through all aspects of our business. Integrated management system certifications (ISO 9001, 14001, 18001), and audits such as ECOVADIS and Responsible Care have become mandatory to even have a starting conversation with key customers.
On the product side, greener chemistries have taken the forefront, with a growing enthusiasm for naturally sourced, bio-based and biodegradable ingredients. We are at the moment keenly engaged in R&D to develop stable, scalable and economically viable formulations based on
biodegradable and/or natural colorants.
Soujanya's Green Initiative
#6 - What are the main trends that will impact most the cosmetics and personal care market in the coming years and how Soujanya can support formulators to lead the evolution?
Other than sustainability which I’d definitely say is the most significant change at the moment, there is also an
increased demand for enhanced product performance. As ingredient suppliers, we have to develop a profound understanding of those applications, and the performance of our products in them. For example, a yellow dye used in detergents has the natural tendency to stain the fabric, and therefore must be treated, stabilized and formulated accordingly so that it does not stain, and is washed off instantly, without affecting any of the cleaning properties of the detergent.
Moreover, I find that the
entire ecosystem increasingly open to collaboration and open innovation. We have multiple ongoing projects with both suppliers and customers, involving extensive knowledge-sharing, joint testing and research, “figuring out” scale-up on the go. It is a gratifying experience to see these initiatives through and jointly bring innovations with a purpose to the market.
Soujanya's Product Range
View a wide range of cosmetic ingredients supplied by Soujanya, analyze technical data of each product, get technical assistance or request samples.
About Jashan Bhumkar
Jashan is the Director and third generation entrepreneur of Soujanya Color Pvt. Ltd, a global leader in sustainable color solutions. He received his Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley and Master's (MPhil) in the same field from Cambridge University, UK.
He is working in Soujanya Color to develop and bring-to-market high-performance color for different applications including printing inks, composite materials, automotive sector, personal care, cosmetics, etc. His work is instrumental in making Soujanya the first company in India to enter the booming automotive composite industry as a color supplier. In this end-application, Soujanya won the TATA Innovista Award 2019 for being this year's most innovative partner across the entire TATA group. Earlier this year, the company also won Zee Business Dare-to-Dream, Company of the Year Award 2019.
Jashan has also focused on global expansion of the business; with a subsidiary in Mexico and branch office in Brazil, Soujanya is now a multinational company. Jashan is a member of the EO (Entrepreneur's Organisation).
Aside from business, he is a professionally trained Indian Classical and Ghazal singer, and has numerous concerts and recordings to his credit. He has been featured on AIR (All India Radio) acknowledging his work in both the fields of business and music.
Discover More About Soujanya