What the Himalayas Smell Like

The easier route was a perfume label. HIMVAANI's founder chose to build the ecosystem around it instead.

Every wellness session ends. That was the problem HIMVAANI's founder kept returning to after years of work in meditation, breathwork, numerology, astrology and experiential healing. The work helped people while they were in the room. Then they went home.

Wellness, the founder writes, should not only exist inside a session or a retreat. It could live in daily life through something ordinary: fragrance, aroma, ritual, self-care. HIMVAANI was built on that idea, with the Himalayas as its reference point. The range now runs across luxury perfumes and attars, essential oils, aromatherapy, bathing salts, incense, dhoop, crystals, soaps, camphor products and experiential fragrance counters.

The Signal Came from Customers

The shift from idea to business came from customer behaviour rather than a plan. People were not only buying a perfume. They wanted the story behind it, the chance to smell it in person, to customise it, sometimes to build an occasion around it. A pitch at the IIT Roorkee E-Summit brought investor interest, which the founder reports as the validation that HIMVAANI could be larger than a product line. From that point the company was framed as an experience-led wellness and lifestyle business.

Small Core, Wide Edge

Today it runs on a small core with a wide edge. The founder reports three full-time team members alongside seven freelancers and collaborators, expanded as projects require. Live perfume bars, experiential counters, corporate activations and weddings all demand people for short, intense periods, so the company has built a network it can assemble rather than a payroll it has to carry.

The model is deliberately hybrid: direct consumer sales, B2B work and live experiences. Customers now include corporates, wedding clients, event organisers and communities commissioning customised work. The founder writes that repeat business, B2B relationships and customer lifetime value matter more at this stage than order volume.

What People Are Actually Buying

The reading of the customer is emotional rather than functional. What people buy, in this account, is a feeling. Confidence, calm, nostalgia, luxury, or a moment of ritual attached to an everyday object.

"Don't confuse having many possibilities with having a clear business model."

The Part That Repeated

There was no single day when shutting down felt close. The difficulty came in repetition. Money committed to inventory, uncertainty about which products would hold, limited resources against the demands of building a brand. The founder writes about questioning whether too much was being attempted at once. The resolution was not having everything figured out, but continuing to find what worked and changing what did not. The company narrowed towards experiences, customisation and B2B rather than depending on conventional product sales.

The Harder Build

The decision most peers would have made differently was refusing to be only a perfume brand. Perfume, packaging, online sales: that route was available and simpler. Instead HIMVAANI was built to move between a luxury bottle, a live perfume bar at a wedding, a corporate wellness experience and a customised gifting solution.

The founder accepts this made the journey more complicated and argues it made the brand harder to copy. The first-year mistake was the same instinct without discipline. More products felt like more opportunity, and what it produced was complexity across inventory, operations, marketing and customer communication.

Structure Next

The next six months are about structure. Hero products across perfumes, attars and aromatherapy. Expansion of live perfume bars, counters and event experiences. Deeper relationships with hotels, wedding planners, event companies, architects, interior designers and corporates.

Three years out, success looks like national presence, a loyal customer base and a portfolio people trust, with employment and collaboration created around it. The founder has a simpler test in mind: someone experiencing a HIMVAANI product and recognising the Himalayas in it, in a modern form.

Key Takeaways

• Wellness delivered as a session has a hard limit. Products carry it into daily life.

• Customer behaviour, not a business plan, revealed the model. People wanted the story and the experience, not only the bottle.

• A lean core plus an assembled network suits a business built on episodic, high-intensity events.

• Breadth without a defined hero product creates operational complexity, not opportunity.

• Differentiation came from refusing the simpler category definition, at the cost of a more complicated build.

~Editor Shobhit Mehandiratta