Our Story
From a quiet beginning to a careful ritual.
Soumm didn’t begin as a business idea. In fact, for many years, it wasn’t a business at all.
More than 25 years ago, my parents-in-law, Smt. Vinaya & Shri. Shivarama Bhandary, created a hair oil for their family & people with need using ingredients that had been trusted in Indian homes for generations. There was no brand, no packaging, no marketing plan. Just care – expressed through something made at home for the people they loved.
Years passed, and that little formula quietly remained within our family.
Then, during my second pregnancy, I went through a period of severe hair fall. Like many women, I was carrying a lot – pregnancy, work, responsibilities, emotions – and somewhere in all of that, I was struggling with something as personal as watching my hair fall every day.
I turned to my mother-in-law for help.
She went back to that old formula and made the oil for me again.
I started using it consistently. Slowly, I began noticing a change. My hair fall reduced, but something else stayed with me too – those few minutes of sitting quietly, massaging my scalp and allowing myself to simply stop.
At the time, I was working with an NGO, and I was constantly meeting women from very different walks of life. Yet there was something strangely common between so many of us: we somehow found time to care for everyone, except ourselves.
That thought never left me.
I kept wondering – if something made with so much care had helped me, why should it remain only within our family?
That was the beginning of Soumm.
We began with the hair oil, but somewhere along the way I understood that Soumm was never really going to be only about hair oil.
It was about care.
About turning an ordinary act like oiling your hair into ten quiet minutes that belong to you. About creating things thoughtfully, sharing what we learn, and reminding people that caring for yourself does not have to be complicated.
Today, every bottle of Soumm carries a little bit of where we began – an old family formula, the care of two generations, and one simple belief I hope we never lose:
While you are busy caring for everyone else, you deserve to be cared for too.
– Supriya
Founder, Soumm
