About Us - Premium Natural Skincare & Thoughtful Gifting

Our Story

Personal care that doesn't cost the planet.

Most personal care brands make you choose — between what works and what's responsible. We built Bare Necessities to make that choice irrelevant. Formulations that perform. Packaging that disappears. Nothing left to regret.

The beginning

Sahar committed to a zero-waste life and carried her entire year's waste in a single 500g jar. A personal challenge that quietly became a mission. Sahar went on to start making her own products to tackle her waste footprint

The world notices

Harper's Bazaar names us one of India's Top 5 Handcrafted Brands. Google India recognises Sahar as Inspiring Indian of the Year. We're no longer just a small brand.

Two becomes a team

Mehul joins. Bare Necessities formally incorporates. Two co-founders, one uncompromising mission. In life, impact, value and business (yes, they had a zero waste wedding too!)

Zero-waste life guide book sustainability eco-friendly living India

The book

Penguin Random House publishes "How to Live a Zero-Waste Life." An Amazon bestseller. Authored by Sahar Mansoor. Zero waste in 352 pages.

COVID meant innovation through resilience

1 year into launch, COVID happens - but that didn't stop us from innovating, we incorporated all our learnings online courses, which are today UNESCO Recognized as Climate Action Resources

THE COMEBACK

The launch of all your favourites today - from our Stir it up (powder to liquid handwash), to our Soak It Up Moisturiser to our natural solid deodorants

GLOBAL RECOGNITION

Sahar is awarded the Cartier Young Leader Award for Bare Necessities' social impact and business model. India's zero-waste story goes global.

Certified B Corporation

India's first B Corp certified FMCG brand. A score of 103.3 against an industry median of 50.9. Not a claim — a verified fact.

National Television

Bare Necessities appears on national TV. Zero waste stops being a niche conversation.

Sahar Mansoor | Founder & CEO

"Sahar Mansoor didn't set out to build a brand. She set out to live differently. Inspired by the zero-waste movement, she began making incremental changes to her lifestyle in 2015 — guided by her grandmother's household wisdom and a deep conviction that India's waste crisis needed a personal response. In 2016, that conviction became Bare Necessities. Global Indian A University of Cambridge alumna with a background in environmental planning, policy and law, Sahar formerly worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva and SELCO Foundation on decentralised energy projects in rural Karnataka. That combination of global policy thinking and grassroots Indian reality is baked into every product Bare Necessities makes. Bare Necessities She has co-authored How to Live a Zero-Waste Life, published by Penguin Random House, and was awarded the Cartier Young Leader Award in 2022 for Bare Necessities' social impact and business model. Her work has been recognised by Google India, NDTV, Vogue, Elle, Al Jazeera and Harper's Bazaar. She carries a 500-gram jar to every workshop — all the waste she has produced in five years of zero-waste living."

Mehul Manjeshwar | Cofounder

"Mehul came to sustainability the way most people do — gradually, then completely. Born and raised in Qatar and Canada, he moved to India and joined Bare Necessities to lead Marketing and Sustainability Communications, bringing with him an MBA in Sustainability from Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business and a background spanning startups, brand strategy and operations. Bare Necessities What started as a professional role became a personal one. Mehul and Sahar met when he was writing about people working towards environmental awareness — and he never really left. Today he oversees marketing, paid media, finance, operations and B2B sales at Bare Necessities, and is the person behind much of the brand's commercial engine. The Established Outside the brand, Mehul is a certified personal trainer who competes in Hyrox, runs a personal wellness platform called Balance with Mehul, and believes that how you treat your body and how you treat the planet aren't that different a question."

Learn more about our values

Being a B Corp isn't a badge we hang on the wall. It's a legal commitment to measure our impact, hold ourselves accountable, and keep getting better. Every product we make, every ingredient we source, every workshop we run — it all feeds into one question: are we actually doing what we said we would? Our annual impact report is where we answer that honestly.