Mira Kapoor has just begun

“You know, we need to stop idolising Korean skin,” declares Mira Kapoor, not a little wearily. “It is that way because a) genetics, and b) Koreans live in a very cold, dry country. So their pores are never dilated, and that makes you feel that their skin is poreless. If you went to a cold country, the same thing would happen to your pores as well.”

It’s a wet, wet, wet June day, and Mira Kapoor—29, partner to Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor, mother of two children, and now entrepreneur—is draped across a wooden chair against a coloured glass window. Mumbai’s monsoon, with its spiralling humidity levels, has arrived with a vengeance. While many of us in this Bandra café are battling cowlicks and oily T-zones, Kapoor’s facade is unfazed. The pores on her face, which, elementary biology tells us, must exist despite the beauty industry’s mighty efforts to erase them, do not reveal themselves today.

I’ve just asked her how she navigates the overload of beauty information we have at our fingertips now, the many skincare trends that clog our Instagram feeds—from lymphatic node massages to refrigerated boiled rice water to achieve that elusive Korean glass skin. And Kapoor, who has been trawling the depths of the internet to find her own best practices since she was at least 20, has some thoughts.

“Because the climate in Korea is so dry,” Kapoor continues professorially, “they need to have those many steps to add that hydration. That’s why they need sheet masks. And if you apply the same thing without context, in India, where it is so hot and humid most of the time, it doesn’t work. I think we need to figure out and celebrate Indian skin—tone, type, and texture—and find the right routines for ourselves.”

This line of inquiry, she says, led her to begin working on her own skincare brand. Akind, her first step into the beauty realm, arrived in Tira stores a few days ago. The line consists of nine products, including cleansers, toners, moisturisers, and sunscreens with different combinations to “build”, “balance”, and “restore” the skin barrier. “Just like you, your skin is one of a kind,” she says. “Akind’s philosophy rests on the belief that everyone has their own unique skin type, which evolves with age, changes with stage, and responds to the environment around it, with its own moods.”

And so, in a universe overflowing with skincare and beauty brands, Akind aims to offer context-based, skin type-, age- and gender-agnostic, hard-working solutions for people who want to “understand their own skin and build a simple routine for themselves”. Simplicity is at the heart of this brand, and that comes through even in its packaging, which Kapoor calls the “most fun and creatively stimulating part of the process”, and which has caught the attention of hawk-eyed followers. Through earthy, grounded colours, tactile bottles, airless pumps, and clear ingredients lists on labels, her team was able to achieve a “balance of form and functionality”.

While Akind itself was born in 2022, after Reliance Retail-backed Tira approached Kapoor, its seeds were laid when she was hitting puberty. “I’ve been interested in skincare since I was 13 or 14,” she recalls. “My mother used to go to Shahnaz Hussain salons, where they’d have this big book of recipes for masks and packs that used a lot of fruit, vegetables, and dal.”

The kitchen was Kapoor’s first lab, where she experimented with all sorts of “potions and lotions”—twists on the trusty old besan-dahi ubtan to hibiscus hair masks to kadipatta-infused hair oils. “My sister’s grandmother-in-law once told me about the wonders of chiraunji (Cuddapah almond),” she reminisces. “She said if you soak it overnight, grind it with a bit of malai, and use the paste to scrub your whole body, it’ll slough off all the dry skin and makes your skin luminous. That’s actually all I did for 20-25 days before my wedding. I didn’t do any of these bridal facials and packs and treatments.”

“Then I realised that as you age, your skin begins to respond differently to different ingredients,” Kapoor says. A difficult experience with maskne during the pandemic led her to dermatologist Pooja Talera, who introduced her to acids—or what she calls her first step into “university-level skincare”.

“She made me understand that my skin is congestion-prone, not just oily or combination or however we categorise our skin,” she says. “That was a turning point for me, which also came at that time when you’re on that unique borderline between when everything works and nothing messes up your skin, and when some things are beginning to leave their mark and not work. So what I was trying to achieve with raw milk, lemon, and tomato, I was now able to get better results with formulated acids—lactic acid, ascorbic acid, mandelic acid.”

Kapoor talks about acids, ingredients, and the Fitzpatrick scale with the rigour of someone who’s inhaled tomes of cosmetology and chemistry, as well as Ayurveda—in which she’s a huge believer. While she hasn’t had any formal education in the field, she speaks on skincare with the authority of someone who’s been in training for decades, imbibing the DIY wisdom of generations of women and the wealth of information available on social media and through guides like Dr Talera and beauty influencer Vasudha Rai, both of whom she holds in high regard. Perhaps because of all this knowledge, Kapoor is quick to add a caveat: “One cannot simply product their way to good skin.”

“Your skin is intimately linked with your body’s well-being,” she says. “It is the largest organ of your body and it reflects the state of your well-being inside. The right balance between mental, physical, and spiritual health shows on your face. In Ayurveda, it’s called ojas—life force. That gives you the glow, the mobility in your joints.”

Finding that balance is a matter of listening to your body and figuring out what works for you, she says. Kapoor’s own tuning fork, for example, revealed that millets are not for her, but a good-quality khapli wheat suits her dosha or constitution. That if she’s feeling “tired and wired” in bed before an early morning, applying ghee to her soles and belly button can do the trick. That that craving for cake is actually her body yearning for magnesium.

And, she says, in the tone of that earnest frontbencher who’s done her homework before it was prescribed, mental health must never be discounted. “Most physical symptoms are a manifestation of some kind of imbalance,” says Kapoor. “It could be anger that vitiates the liver. It could be worry that troubles the spleen or the lungs. It could be just being over-stimulated, making you feel like you’re all over the place. That’s what vata is—and you don’t know how to ground yourself.”

Her way of doing that is to stay in touch with her spiritual side by being mindful of “the basic principles of karma”, and on a more day-to-day basis, to prioritise, compartmentalise, and organise—all tricks she’s learnt in the last decade, along with some hard-won lessons on being a “Bollywood wife”, motherhood, and the pitfalls of celebrity or having millions of followers.

Along the way, Kapoor has also been investing her energies in learning how to run a business and understanding consumer psychology. In a bid to connect with consumers, she also launched a YouTube channel in 2022, where she has chatted with Kusha Kapila about the latter’s lifetime battle with acne and with her own mother about her beauty expertise.

Indeed, she appears to be building herself a little 21st-century Goop-style wellness empire—a smoothie of media and new-age holistic living offerings. Alongside Akind, Kapoor has also invested in companies like Wellbeing Nutrition and Zama Organics. “All the brands that I’ve invested in align with my conscience, and it was a conscious decision to choose ones that encompass wellness,” she says. Whatever the formula, the fact remains that it is a good time to be invested in this space—by some estimates, India’s health and wellness industry is projected to reach a valuation of US$1.3 trillion this year.

“There is huge potential for wellness in India,” agrees Kapoor. “I think the next step for me is creating a space for wellness. A place where you can experience an alignment of mind, body, and soul, and your journey of self-discovery and betterment happens, all in one place.”

What about Akind’s own next steps? “I think the natural segue would be performance make-up,” she muses, “and more products that can be buildable into your routine. Not many more products necessarily, but more hard-working ones. I mean, for example, why can’t a man and a woman share one tub of really good moisturiser?”

Kapoor’s aim remains to simplify things for the consumer. A greater acceptance of diversity, in skin tone as well as products and ingredients from around the world, and a shift away from prescribed ideals of beauty to revelling in one’s uniqueness—these are some of the changes she would like to see.

“I think everyone’s being more mindful about what they put on their face. They’re checking back of pack,” she says. “They care that whatever they buy actually performs. People are more open to trying more new things as long as it works. They’re more willing to go on that trial-and-error journey of self-discovery.”

Between ritual and regimen, it might seem as if we are all now operating somewhere on the spectrum between self-care and self-optimisation. And that’s natural too, says Kapoor. “Self-improvement made its way into skincare quite naturally, but it’s no longer just about vanity. I love that people now connect mental health with skincare. So whether you want to use a crystal or a candle or a gua sha or an LED mask or just a plain old moisturiser or listen to a specific frequency on Spotify, we all answer our need for self-improvement. The trick is to heed the call of your body—whatever that means to you.”

Hair and make-up by Mitesh Rajani. Visual direction by Jay Modi. Art direction by Harry Iyer. Assisted by Rishita Hindocha (hair and make-up); Vedica Vora (styling); Ilaa Parakh (fashion)

Check out how Mira Kapoor fared in our Shuffled series, below: