It Reminded Them of Their Mothers. That's When Aromesa Stopped Being a Hobby.

Most founders start with a problem to solve. Shivani started with her own exhaustion, and a small thing she made just for herself.

It started with her own exhaustion, not a plan

Shivani had spent a long stretch in the corporate world when she noticed how depleted life had become: last-minute chaos, constant pressure, almost no room to pause. Aromesa, she is clear, never began with a business plan or a problem statement. It began out of curiosity, an attempt to build small pockets of calm inside an otherwise relentless routine. The first products were made only for herself.

What her friends said back

When she began sharing what she made with friends and family, the responses caught her off guard. "This reminds me of the hills," one told her. "This reminds me of my mother," said another. The reactions were not about ingredients or finish. They were about memory. That, she realized, was when the products stopped being a private habit and started to mean something: they were helping people reconnect with a feeling they had misplaced.

No team, no plan, just instinct

There was no team and no deliberate decision to become an entrepreneur. Shivani followed instinct, hoping to create a small positive change inside her own circle, and grew the work outward one step at a time. She handled production, photography, and packaging herself, doing what felt right each day rather than following a map.

"Your first product may not be perfect, and your first sale may not be successful,"

The wins were small, and she counts them anyway

Asked about early milestones, Shivani is honest that there were no dramatic ones. Her wins were quiet: someone saying "I love your product," or a customer returning to an exhibition stall to tell her, "I remember you. I bought this from you earlier, and I'm here to buy it again." In a brand built on memory, a customer who remembers is not a small thing. It is the whole point.

The challenge that hasn't gone away

Visibility remains her hardest problem. Aromesa is a wellness brand competing against countless others, many a single click away on platforms like Amazon, and persuading people to try a handmade, small-batch product instead is a genuine uphill fight. It is harder still, she points out, because people rarely experiment with wellness or skincare once something already works for them. Winning a new customer is not a one-time hurdle. It is an ongoing argument.

Meeting Kshitij, finding Unhu

Shivani found Unhu through an Instagram advertisement and reached out, eventually meeting Kshitij, whose questions in the first ten to fifteen minutes were pointed enough that she left unsure she had fully convinced him. She enjoyed the conversation regardless. A later visit to Unhu's Startup Emporium and a workshop showed her how much, and how little, she actually understood about her own brand. She describes the community's philosophy, in their words, as "Let me hold your hand, help you, and grow together," and says it feels less like a platform than a place she can turn to without being judged.

Letting people touch and smell the product

Being present at the Startup Emporium let customers experience Aromesa in person, which matters for a body-oil brand in a way an online photograph never can. Beyond that exposure, she credits Unhu with mentorship, feedback, and help exploring curated corporate gifting. In one collaboration, models built their own stories around her products. Watching how differently each person read the same items taught her the weight of storytelling, alongside honest feedback that her visuals and branding still needed work.

Shivani says. "Entrepreneurship is a journey of continuous learning and growth. Don't wait for opportunities to come to you. Create them yourself."

She never set out to build a brand. She just kept noticing what her friends said after they tried it, and built the rest around that.

Key Takeaways

• There was no founding problem, by her own account: Aromesa came from personal stress and curiosity, not a business plan, which makes it an exception even among founder stories.

• Customer feedback shaped the idea, word for word: phrases like "this reminds me of my mother" are what told her the product meant more than she'd planned.

• She names smallness as a real win, not a setback: a returning exhibition customer or a single "I love your product" comment counted as her early proof, by her own telling.

• Visibility, not product quality, is her stated bottleneck: she's explicit that the fight is for attention against larger commercial wellness brands, not for product credibility.

• Her closing advice doubles as her own biography: "don't wait for opportunities, create them" describes exactly how she got from a corporate job to Aromesa, not just generic advice. ~Editor Shobhit Mehandiratta