Our Sourcing Story

Every bottle of Roots & Herbs starts with a question we ask before anything else: would this ingredient have a place in a traditional Ayurvedic formulation? That single filter shapes everything about how we source, formulate and bottle our skincare and haircare.

Rooted in Ayurvedic tradition

Ayurveda has relied on the same core group of herbs, oils and botanicals for thousands of years, not because nothing newer has come along, but because these ingredients keep working. Bhringraj, Hibiscus, Brahmi, Amla, Neem, Manjistha, Bakuchi and Tulsi all earn their place in our formulations the way they earned their place in classical Ayurvedic texts: through long, repeated use rather than a single clinical trial. Modern dermatology is only now mapping a lot of these benefits onto ingredients like retinol or niacinamide analogues — we go into that in more detail on our Ayurvedic skincare vs Western actives page.

How we choose what goes into a formula

We don't add a herb to a product because it sounds good on a label. Every ingredient has to clear three checks before it is considered for a formulation:

• Traditional use: a documented history of use in Ayurveda for the specific concern the product targets, whether that is hair fall, pigmentation or dryness.
• Compatibility: how well it works alongside the other actives in that formula, since Ayurvedic formulations are built as synergistic blends rather than single-ingredient fixes.
• Vegan and cruelty-free fit: every raw material has to be plant-derived and free of animal testing at every stage, with no exceptions, since that is non-negotiable for the brand.

From raw herb to finished bottle

Our herbs and botanicals are sourced from growers across India, the country where most of these plants are native and best understood agronomically. Raw materials are checked on arrival, and formulations are developed and tested in small batches before they are scaled up for the shop, so a new product only reaches the website once it has gone through that process rather than straight from a drawing board.

Where a traditional method genuinely works better than a shortcut, we use it: that includes slower processes like cold-pressing certain oils or the six-week cure time on our handmade soaps, rather than speeding things up at the cost of the finished product.

Vegan and cruelty-free, without exception

Roots & Herbs is 100% vegan and cruelty-free across the entire range. That isn't a marketing line on one or two products; it's a baseline requirement every formulation has to meet before it's approved, whether it's a hero product or a small addition to the men's or kids' ranges.

An ongoing process, not a finished one

We keep adding to our ingredient glossary and comparison content as we go — you can read about individual herbs in our Ayurvedic Ingredient Glossary, and about how specific Ayurvedic ingredients compare to their Western skincare-active counterparts on the Ayurvedic vs Western actives page. If there's a specific herb or formulation question you'd like us to cover, our team is happy to answer it directly.

FAQs

Is Roots & Herbs actually Ayurvedic, or is that just a branding term? Every formulation is built around herbs and botanicals with a documented history of use in Ayurveda, not just a handful of headline ingredients with the rest made up of generic fillers.
Are your products tested on animals? No. The brand is 100% vegan and cruelty-free across every product, with no exceptions.
Where do your ingredients come from? From growers across India, where the majority of the herbs we use are native and traditionally cultivated.