Dr Vanita Rattan | Skincare by Dr V

Women to Watch | Beauty Founders

Dr Vanita Rattan: Doctor, cosmetic formulator and founder of Skincare by Dr V shares her mission to transform skincare for skin of colour through science and education.

“This is much more than a brand. It’s a mission.” – Dr Vanita Rattan

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When Dr Vanita Rattan began searching for answers to her own skin concerns, she quickly discovered something the beauty industry had overlooked for decades.

As a doctor experiencing early-onset melasma, she realised that many of the products available simply weren’t designed with melanin-rich skin in mind. While countless brands claimed to offer solutions for hyperpigmentation, very few had been formulated or tested specifically for Black and Brown skin. Rather than accepting the gap, she decided to dedicate her career to closing it.

Today, Dr Vanita Rattan is recognised as one of the world’s leading voices on skincare for skin of colour. Combining medicine, cosmetic formulation and education, she has built a loyal global community while creating products backed by science rather than marketing claims. Alongside her online platform, she has established what she describes as the world’s only laboratory dedicated exclusively to Black and Brown skin, allowing her to formulate products from the ground up with the needs of melanin-rich skin at their core.

Her mission extends far beyond launching skincare. Through education, research and transparency, she wants to empower consumers to better understand their skin and make informed choices, challenging misconceptions that have existed within the beauty industry for years.

As part of Darling Magazine’s Women to Watch | Beauty Founders series, we spoke to Dr Vanita Rattan about science, entrepreneurship, building a legacy and why she believes understanding your skin is one of the most powerful forms of self-care.

“Skin of colour has a completely different biology and needs completely different ingredients.”

1. Tell us about yourself. Who are you outside of your business?

So I really am a workaholic. I think being a child of immigrants, that’s sort of the general trait amongst all of us. I’m also a mother of two. And I’m probably more obsessive than I should be, and very goal-oriented. So I wouldn’t even say, like, I have a good work-life balance. Pretty much work seeps into life, and my children are very much involved in my business. So I’m not sure if that’s an answer, but that’s the reality of the situation.

2. When did you first realise beauty was going to become part of your career?

For me, I realized beauty… I wouldn’t even call it beauty. For me, it was skin science, understanding formulations and ideal percentage actives for skin of colour. So it really came from more of a scientific perspective rather than beauty itself. I had a medical background, my parents owned a cosmetics company, and I wanted to learn from their formulator how to treat hyperpigmentation in skin of colour, because I myself was getting melasma in my early, late 20s, so early onset melasma. And I wanted to know how to tackle it. So I really was coming from a medical perspective, and that’s when I realized this is the industry I wanted to get into, because nothing really existed for us.

3. What problem were you trying to solve when you launched your brand?

I was trying to fill the giant void of creating everything we need for skin of colour from head to toe, starting off with the products that I specifically needed as a woman in my late 30s, early 40s, that didn’t exist for us. And up until that point, I’d just been recommending what was okay in Boots but not made specifically for melanin-rich skin. So I was trying to fill that void.

4. Was there a defining moment where you thought:

“I’m actually going to do this.”

The defining moment where I thought, am I actually going to do this, is we, the first product we launched with was our lip hyperpigmentation kit. It was a 100-pound kit. The minimum order was 10,000 units. It was incredibly expensive to manufacture. And I was dipping into my savings to do it. It was during COVID. We had no income coming in. And this was from our precious savings that we had to survive on. And I remember doing a poll on my Instagram page, and we had thousands of people saying they would purchase it, even though it was such an expensive niche product for skin of colour for a tiny part of the body. And I remember just taking the plunge and thinking, it’s now or never. And so we did it. And I couldn’t believe that it was a product that actually sold out. And it made me think, if we can do this for lip hyperpigmentation, imagine what could happen when we do the rest of the body. And so I think that was the moment for me.

5.What has been the biggest challenge you’ve overcome as a founder?

I think the biggest challenge I’m overcoming as a founder is deciding between two completely different routes. One is, do I get investors and then go big in retail, which visibly looks incredible and it gives you the halo effect? Or do I build slowly through DTC and then Amazon Prime? Do I do it that way using my own money where every penny is accounted for and you can’t afford to make mistakes and you grow slower? But the goal for me isn’t to sell the company. So in my mind, I feel like growing slowly but growing steadily seems like the better option considering I want to do this till I die and really create a legacy brand. This is much more than just a brand. It’s a mission. I want to create the best products in the world formulated specifically for skin of colour. And we have the only lab in the world dedicated to skin of colour. So it’s just so much more than a brand. It’s a mission. And that was one of the tough decisions for me.

6. What’s one thing people assume about running a beauty brand that simply isn’t true?

I think the one thing about running a beauty brand that simply isn’t true is that people assume that if a product launch looks fabulous, the product itself is fabulous. And that isn’t the case. The key really comes down to reviews. And even the brand owner doesn’t know how good a product is until you have thousands of people purchasing it and then leaving their reviews. Only then does even the beauty brand owner know if a product is good or not.

There have been times that, for example, when we created the Pregnancy Glow Serum, which was a first-ever anti-ageing, anti-pigmentation serum for pregnancy, and I launched it, I loved the formula, but the positioning wasn’t right. It happened to be much bigger than just that. It happened to be the best vitamin C ever made for skin of colour in an airless pump with 10 actives in it, safe to use during the day. And so because I was getting the reviews were actually angry men saying, why has this not been made for us as a vitamin C serum? Only then did I realize I positioned it completely wrong and I had to rebrand the whole thing. And that’s coming as a founder. You would think you know what you’re doing. You think you know the answers. You think you know your customer. But actually, it’s only after you launch do you realize the mistakes that you’ve made. I think people don’t realize that.

“We vote with our money, and ultimately brands will listen once consumers vote.”

7. What does success mean to you today compared to when you first started?

Success when I first started was just survival. It was just, will anybody buy? Will I break even? Because I was using my own money, I’m still using my own money. Success now is how do I ensure every single person who has skin of colour, who wants to learn about their skin, has access to the best skincare in the world with the best actives and the most beautiful packaging at affordable prices? How can I do it? So the question is different that I ask myself today than I asked five years ago.

8.How do you look after your own wellbeing while running a business?

The Brand

I do, I’ve done a very rubbish job of this, to be perfectly honest. It was only last December I started getting palpitations for a month that just wouldn’t go down, even when I was on holiday in Jamaica. Our purpose was to relax. I couldn’t seem to calm my palpitations. And slowly I’ve just, instead of putting so much pressure on myself, the first thing I did was extend my timeline. Instead of thinking I need to achieve X, Y, and Z, you know, in the next few months, it’s like let me give myself a year to achieve that. So number one was extending timelines. And number two, six months later, I’m learning how to delegate. So previously I was really doing five people’s jobs. I was writing my own scripts. I was filming. I’d edit half my videos. Even when I had video editors editing, I would tweak every single video. I would upload, do comments. I’d be in the DMs on top of being in the lab formulating for skin of colour, on top of trying to grow the brand. I mean, it was just exhausting and actually ridiculous, to be honest. So now, finally, we’ve got three team members now to take over most of those roles. And my job really should be focused on growth. So now we have a chief marketing officer. We have a chief AI officer. We have a growth team. And all these things have started to reduce the amount of pressure on me and the amount of noise in my mind, which gives me space to think and it gives me space to observe and to create what’s best for us and what’s best for this particular company. So slowly I’m learning to delegate. Still not great at it, but it’s a skill, actually, just like any other skill that is learnable that I’m trying to improve.

9. Which product best represents your brand and why?

The product that best represents my brand would be InZincable. It’s the world’s first mineral SPF 50 formulated for Black and Brown skin, and it won the Marie Claire Award for Best Mineral Sunscreen for Black Skin. I add in stem cells and tyrosinase inhibitors to treat dark marks, because that’s our number one concern. It probably best represents my brand because I failed so many times to make it happen, and it cost me tens of thousands of pounds in that failure. And that really embodies the whole brand — right from building the world’s first lab dedicated to Black and Brown skin, where it tends to be huge upfront costs, but hopefully doing good for the community.

10. If somebody had never heard of your brand before, what would you want them to know?

If someone had never heard of my brand before, I would want them to know that skin of colour has a different biology to Caucasian skin. And the majority of products made in Boots, Target, CVS, have been made for Caucasian skin and tested on Caucasian skin. Skin of colour, melanin-rich skin, is completely different. It behaves completely differently and needs completely different ingredients. So that’s where I’d start. I’d also say that I’m the world’s only doctor who’s a cosmetic formulator specifically for skin of colour with my own lab dedicated to skin of colour. And that’s really important because only once you have that can you really formulate everything head to toe for melanin-rich skin.

11. What are you most proud of building?

I think I’m most proud of taking my savings and building my own laboratory. Because when you build your own lab, you have your own ingredients, which means I can go there day or night. If I have any inspiration, I can go and make any product, from a shampoo to a hair growth tonic, to body oil, to a hyperpigmentation kit. There’s nothing I can’t make in the lab. So it gave me complete freedom. So although there was a huge initial investment, upfront cost, which doesn’t make sense to really any other brand, it just so happens that the brand founder here is also a cosmetic formulator. And so it gave me freedom. It means I don’t have to rely on anyone, I don’t have to wait for anyone. I can get things moving really quickly, which is how we’ve managed to make 42 products in four years. That’s very rare for any brand to do.

12. What’s next? Any launches… Projects… Collaborations… Dreams…

For me, I think the next phase will be doing a lot more marketing in the USA and working a lot more with US influencers, in order to teach about skincare for all skin of colour.

Launches — The next launch will be our Tinted Mineral SPF 50. It’ll be the world’s first Tinted SPF 50 with zero white cast for skin of colour, with antibacterials and anti-hyperpigmentation actives in it, so it can treat the skin during the day. That launches in about four weeks’ time, so we’re looking at mid-July.

Projects — Now I’ve got 42 products that I’ve created in the last four years, we haven’t really focused much on the storytelling element — how to talk to the normal consumer, versus the people who are seeking me out with a specific skincare concern and finding me on YouTube or Google. So it’s about getting the message out to the general public that skin of colour is different to Caucasian skin. Even if it’s not about buying my brand, it’s about learning the fundamental differences and the different ingredients that we need.

Collaborations — I’ve had some fantastic collaborations this year. I worked with Paige, who I adore — she came in to get a facial done. We’ve worked with Bollywood stars this year too, which was amazing. And we’ve got some exciting collabs coming that I can’t discuss yet, so keep your eyes peeled.

Dreams — My dream is that it becomes common knowledge that skin of colour is different to Caucasian skin, and that we need different actives. Korean beauty, for example, is never going to suit Black and Brown skin — fundamentally, the biology is different. Initially you might see good results, but then dark marks start to appear, because those products were never made for skin of colour.

“Success today is making sure everyone with skin of colour has access to the best skincare in the world.

Darling

Complete this sentence…

“Beauty means…”

It’s a bit of a cliché, but I do feel that when you feel secure inside, and you feel secure when you’re looking in the mirror, you feel like you can achieve anything. Your mindset changes, and things you maybe weren’t able to achieve previously, you feel you can now. That’s really the difference between having confidence and not having it. So for me, that’s what beauty is. It’s confidence.

Complete this sentence…

“The one thing I wish every woman knew is…”

…is that it’s in our hands. We are fully responsible for understanding what we’re putting on our skin, and we can educate and empower ourselves. We don’t have to fall for marketing, we don’t have to fall for these billion-dollar budgets. It’s on us. We vote with our pound, we vote with our money — and ultimately brands will listen once consumers vote. So I want every woman to know that they’re empowered to, number one, educate themselves, and number two, actually change formulations on a macro scale.

Why do you think women should continue supporting independent beauty founders?

I think it’s not really about women having to support independent beauty founders. It’s about women supporting brands that produce the best products. And that’s not necessarily always going to be the big brands, even though they have the biggest marketing spend and the biggest R&D budget. Often it tends to be the independents who are closer to the problem, formulating really for themselves. When I formulate a skincare product, I’m formulating for myself — for the pigmentation I have, the early onset melasma, and the dry skin I’m now getting because of perimenopause in my 40s. So it’s not about supporting an independent brand for its own sake; it’s that independent brands tend to be closer to the problem themselves.

Dr Vanita Rattan

• You’ve become one of the leading voices on pigmentation and skin of colour. What first inspired that mission?

After medical school, when I was 25, I started to get early onset melasma. I thought they were cute freckles until my mum corrected me, and I started to investigate what products were available for pigmentation in skin of colour. They didn’t exist. Everything was made for white skin — and still is. Dark mark products are tested on Caucasians and formulated for Caucasians. So I thought, let me try to learn how to become a cosmetic formulator. My parents owned a cosmetics brand, so I learned from their formulator. Something I thought would take me maybe six months to produce took me five years — to understand which actives were made for skin of colour, how to combine them, and how to shift stubborn pigmentation in skin of colour. That’s what really inspired me.

I then built my own laboratory and my own factory, and I had eight clinics — the Hyperpigmentation Clinic — all around the world: Harley Street, Birmingham, Manchester, Mumbai, South Africa, Johannesburg and Durban, Mauritius, Pakistan. We were all over the world, and that lasted until COVID hit. Once COVID hit, we had to shut all the clinics, but I kept the laboratory. I thought, is it possible for me to create an online following and sell directly to my followers? That’s what ended up happening — we grew to 3.5 million followers. And now, every product I make, I ask my followers what they want me to make and what actives they want. I take them into the lab with me, and we formulate together.

• There’s so much skincare advice online today. How can women separate fact from fiction? If you could change one misconception about skincare overnight, what would it be?

To be honest, it’s very difficult. That’s why it’s important to have doctors on social media platforms, because the cosmetic laws are actually quite lax compared to the medical laws. You can make claims in cosmetics that you can’t make in medicine. That’s why it’s important for us to be able to read what’s actually in our skincare — to read the ingredients and know what we’re actually buying.

I think the misconception is that skincare is too overwhelming, too difficult — so people either leave it altogether, or go and buy the most expensive thing, thinking it’s the best thing. What I try to do with my social media is really try to simplify it. Ultimately, we just need three main products. You need a brightening serum with vitamin C — not L-ascorbic acid, but a derivative like 3-O-ethyl ascorbic acid plus tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate — and ideally some other tyrosinase inhibitors like licorice root extract. You need a nice moisturiser with ceramides and peptides, because we lack ceramides — I created the CeraPep Brightening Moisturiser for this reason, and added stem cells, licorice root extract and niacinamide to brighten the skin. And then you need a mineral SPF 50 on top, which is why I created InZincable, a mineral SPF 50 with no white cast for Black and Brown skin. So it’s really three simple steps. Even at nighttime, if you just use a vitamin C serum and your CeraPep, you’re doing a really good job — you’ll be brightening the skin.

Quick Fire

Favourite book? Unleash the Power Within by Tony Robbins — I also loved his course.

Morning or night? –

Coffee or tea? Neither, really — I don’t drink much coffee or tea. It’s more if I’m out and about socially, but it’s not something I tend to do by myself daily.

One beauty product you couldn’t live without? My CeraPep Brightening Moisturiser. No matter where I go in the world, that’s going to be in my bag — along with InZincable. So really it’s two products.

Favourite place to travel? It depends who I’m going with. I recently got back from Bodrum with my girlfriends, and it was so fun — for a girls’ trip, it’s either Bodrum, Ibiza or Vegas. For a family trip, I love Greece — I love going to Sani in Greece, which is such an amazing resort for the family. It’s probably one of my favourites. I just need the ocean, water sports and good music, and that’s pretty much it.

One piece of advice for aspiring founders? To be honest, it’s really difficult nowadays for beauty. I’d say, first of all, really understand what’s already available. Then figure out what doesn’t exist that you wish had been created for you, and go really niche. The mistake I made is I created so many products so quickly — it’s very rare to do that, it’s not normal. The only reason I could is because I’m the formulator and I have a lab, so it’s easy for me to do. But it’s not the smart way to do it. The smart way is to create maybe one product a year, where you focus all of your marketing, all of your knowledge, all your influencers on just that one product for the year. That’s how you really squeeze as much juice out of that product as possible. For me, because I need to create everything for skin of colour, from head to toe, I went quite hard on the formulation side — but it’s not the smart move. So don’t do it the way I did it, basically.

What becomes clear throughout our conversation with Dr Vanita Rattan is that her work has never simply been about skincare.

It’s about challenging long-held assumptions, giving consumers access to better information and ensuring that Black and Brown skin is no longer treated as an afterthought within the beauty industry. Every product she develops begins with science, but behind that science is a determination to create lasting change for future generations.

As her brand continues to expand internationally, with new launches, growing educational platforms and an increasing focus on the US market, her ambition remains remarkably consistent: to make skincare for skin of colour both accessible and evidence-based.

In an industry often driven by trends and marketing, Dr Vanita Rattan offers something refreshingly different. A reminder that innovation isn’t always about creating something new. Sometimes it’s about finally creating what should have existed all along.

Visit: Skincare By Dr V