“I did not discover Ayurveda. I was born into it.”
For most people, Ayurveda is something they find. Something in a book, at a wellness retreat, in conversation with a doctor. For me, it was simply the air I grew up breathing. My family's relationship with Ayurveda is not a philosophy we adopted. It is a living inheritance, passed from hand to hand across two centuries.
"Ayurveda was not something I discovered. It was something I was trusted to carry forward."
It begins with my forefather, Brahmasree Cholayil Kunju Maami Vaidyar. He was an Ayurvedic healer in the truest sense. He was not a practitioner of a system, but a man who understood the language of the body and the language of nature as one. People came to him with ailments that modern medicine had not yet named. He healed them. Not with chemicals but with wisdom and with formulations that took a lifetime to perfect and generations to preserve. This knowledge was not written in a textbook. It was passed down through generations the way all true wisdom travels - slowly, personally, through practice and presence.
For years, I knew what my family carried. What I did not know was how to bring it into the world in a way that was worthy of it.
The afternoon that changed everything.
I remember the afternoon clearly. I was visiting our ancestral home in Vallapad, the place where this lineage began. Walking by the streams, through the coconut groves, I felt something I had not expected to feel: not nostalgia, but clarity. I was not looking back at a legacy. I was looking forward at a bridge.
The world I lived in was saturated with noise, with chemicals, with products that promised transformation and delivered confusion. And here, in this place, my family had been holding something extraordinary for 200 years. Formulations built not on trends but on the deep understanding that the body knows how to heal itself when you give it the right tools.
That was the day SADHEV was born. Not as a business idea. As an obligation.
— Lasakan Cholayil
Co-Founder, SADHEV
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I did not inherit Ayurveda the way Lasakan did.
I chose it and then chose to build it into something the world could actually use. Because let’s be honest, most of what exists today isn’t working. Too many products. Too many promises. Too little truth.
What drew me to SADHEV wasn’t just the lineage. It was the clarity of it.
No noise. No performance. Just formulations that have worked for generations. Building this with Lasakan has also meant understanding the value of family not just as legacy but as responsibility.
But heritage alone is not enough.
If it isn’t evolved, sustained and made to work for the world we live in today, it becomes irrelevant. So my role has been simple: Take something deeply traditional and make it uncompromisingly relevant, in a way that is both sustainable and built for how people live now. That means better formulations. Better textures. Better standards. It means questioning everything, even what we’ve inherited and rebuilding it where needed. And it also means building a company where women are not just part of the story but they are leading it. As a woman, SADHEV is shaped to understand care not as a routine, but as instinct. From how we formulate, to how we design, to how we think about the person using it.
This is not Ayurveda preserved in time.This is Ayurveda, made to work now.
Not louder. Not trend-driven. Just clearer, better and built to last.
— Akshara Sitaraman
Co-Founder, SADHEV
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From soil to skin.
If there is one decision that defines what SADHEV is, it is this: we built our own farm before we launched our first product.
Sadhevana is our 80-acre organic sanctuary on the outskirts of Chennai. Ingredients that go into a SADHEV formulation begins here, in soil that has never been touched by chemical fertiliser. Our farmers nourish Sadhevana using Panchakavya, an ancient Ayurvedic practice that has been used to enrich Indian soil for centuries. Five sacred elements, fermented and returned to the earth. It is as Ayurvedic as the products themselves.
Ingredients that do not thrive at our farm itself are sourced from where they are of true origin. Such as saffron from Pulwama, argan oil from Morocco, roses from Bulgaria, all of which do not
grow well in Tamil Nadu. The standard is always the same: if it does not meet ours, it does not enter a SADHEV product.
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What SADHEV is and what it is not.
SADHEV is not a wellness brand that discovered Ayurveda. It is not a heritage brand that performs tradition for aesthetics. It is not a luxury brand that uses Ayurveda as a positioning device.
SADHEV is what happens when a 200-year Ayurvedic lineage meets the standards, conscience and ambitions of the contemporary world.
Every product we make is free of sulphates, parabens and phthalates. Not because clean beauty is fashionable but because our family does not practice the use of harmful ingredients and we have no intention of starting now. We follow green chemistry principles. We are certified Plastic Positive, we recycle more plastic than we consume, every single month, certified by The Disposal Company. We also plant a tree with every purchase.
These are not just brand initiatives. They are consequences of who we are.
