Ask your grandmother about neem and she will not stop talking. Neem paste for pimples. Neem water for bathing in summer. Neem twigs as a toothbrush before Colgate ever arrived in the village. For generations, the neem tree which grows freely across India, almost uninvited, was the original skincare routine for hundreds of millions of people.
Today, that same ingredient is being cold-pressed, bottled, labelled in English, and sold back to Indian consumers at ten to twenty times the price. And we are buying it.
This is not a story about neem. It is a story about what happens when a country stops trusting its own knowledge.
Neem scientifically known as Azadirachta indica is not a new discovery. Its antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties have been documented in Ayurvedic texts for thousands of years. The active compounds in neem, particularly nimbidin and azadirachtin, are now confirmed by modern research to be effective against acne-causing bacteria, skin inflammation, and fungal infections. Clinical studies show neem demonstrates up to 89% efficacy against the bacteria responsible for acne. In short, the science backs what Indian households have known forever.
So what changed? Somewhere along the way, neem became associated with poverty, with the past, with things that “uneducated” people did. As India urbanised and aspired, the neem tree in the backyard was quietly replaced by a skincare shelf stocked with foreign-sounding products. A face wash with salicylic acid felt more credible than a neem paste your mother made. A serum in a glass dropper bottle felt more premium than neem oil you bought in bulk from the local kirana store for ₹200 a litre.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world was paying close attention.
Global beauty brands began integrating neem into their formulations quietly at first, then with growing confidence. The global neem extract market, valued at USD 690 million in 2024, is projected to reach USD 1.32 billion by 2032. Product launches featuring neem as a hero ingredient grew 18% year-over-year in 2025 alone. Western wellness brands, the same ones that Indian consumers now queue for on Nykaa and Instagram, began listing “neem leaf extract” in their ingredient decks, right next to retinol and hyaluronic acid, as if they had invented it.
Closer home, Indian luxury Ayurveda brands understood this dynamic early and played it brilliantly. Forest Essentials, founded in 2000, took ancient Ayurvedic formulations including neem and wrapped them in gold packaging, artisanal storytelling, and premium price points. Kama Ayurveda did the same. Both brands built loyal, paying audiences by making traditional ingredients feel aspirational again. A simple neem product, repositioned as “Ayurvedic luxury skincare,” now commands hundreds to thousands of rupees per bottle.
The irony is almost painful. Raw neem powder at the local market costs ₹30 to ₹80 per kilogram. Pure neem oil from bulk suppliers is available for ₹180 to ₹200 per litre. The ingredient itself is abundant, cheap, and grows across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra India collectively produces about 2.5 lakh metric tonnes of neem oil annually, making it the world’s largest producer. Yet the moment neem is dressed up in premium packaging with an English label and a Nykaa listing, the same Indian consumer who ignored it suddenly wants it.
The global Ayurveda market tells the full story of what is at stake. In 2025, it was valued at USD 20.54 billion. By 2030, it is projected to reach USD 50.46 billion. The skin and hair segment alone holds the largest share. Much of this growth is being driven by Western wellness consumers who are actively seeking out Ayurvedic ingredients like neem, turmeric, and ashwagandha ingredients that Indian households have used for centuries without ever putting a price tag on them.
To be fair, the brands that commercialised neem deserve credit for doing something important: they made India’s own heritage aspirational again. Forest Essentials and Kama Ayurveda did not trick anyone. They took real ingredients with real benefits and gave them the presentation they were always worthy of. The problem is not that neem is now premium. The problem is that Indian consumers needed a foreign validation or a luxury rebrand before they could see the value in something that was always right there.
And therein lies the deeper question this trend asks us. Why does a glass dropper bottle make us trust an ingredient more than our grandmother’s word ever did? Why did it take a Western beauty trend called “clean beauty” to make us rediscover what Ayurveda had been saying for three thousand years? And why are we comfortable paying ₹800 for a neem face wash when the raw ingredient costs ₹3 per 100 grams?
The answer is probably uncomfortable: decades of colonial conditioning taught us to distrust things that came from our own soil unless someone else had already approved of them. A product in English felt scientific. A product in Hindi felt local. Locals felt lesser. We are still, slowly, unlearning that.
The good news is that unlearning is happening. Gen Z consumers in India are increasingly curious about Ayurvedic ingredients, are willing to research them, and are starting to bypass the premium middleman altogether making their own neem face packs, buying raw neem oil, or choosing affordable Ayurvedic brands without shame. The idea that desi is inferior is losing its grip, one ingredient at a time.
Neem never left. It was here, in every Indian courtyard, priced at ₹30 a kilo, waiting patiently while we learned to call it “clean beauty.”
Subscribe Deshwale on YouTube
