/work/open brief·06·speculative
Mysore Sandal Soap.
“Mysore Sandal Soap is owned by the Karnataka state government and has barely changed since 1916. That is the brand. That is also the problem.”
Karnataka Soaps and Detergents has been making the most authentically Indian luxury soap for over a century - pure Mysore sandalwood, the Sharabha mark, the green-and-gold pack. The brand is loved, undervalued, and structurally constrained by being a public-sector undertaking. We'd write the strategy that respects all three.
Brand strategy · heritage repositioning
the state of play
Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Limited (KSDL) was founded in 1916 by Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, the Maharaja of Mysore, to find a use for the surplus sandalwood from the state's forests. Over a century later, the soap is still made with Mysore sandalwood oil, packaged in the same green-and-gold scheme, and still carries the Sharabha - the mythical creature with the head of a lion and the body of an elephant - as its mark. KSDL is now a Karnataka government enterprise (a state PSU), and Mysore sandalwood holds a Geographical Indication tag. The brand retains strong recognition in South India and minimal recognition outside it. In the international luxury Ayurvedic segment, newer privately-held brands - Forest Essentials, Kama Ayurveda - outsell Mysore Sandal in export channels by a wide margin despite having a fraction of the heritage.
the thesis
The opposite of a luxury D2C brand is an institution. While KSDL's aggressive new national push-symbolized by the appointment of high-profile, non-local brand ambassadors-proves they want to chase mainstream FMCG scale, it risks hollowing out the brand's core asset: its sacred regional provenance. We don't need to fight mainstream commercialism with bland celebrity faces; we fight it with sovereign heritage.
what we'd do
- 01
Build a House of Mysore parent architecture - Mysore Sandal Soap remains the flagship, with the same Sharabha mark presiding over a tightly extended range (talc, body oil, hand wash) using consistent typography and material.
- 02
Commission a custom display serif for the brand that draws on Kannada inscription typography. The English wordmark stays primary; the secondary type system carries the Karnataka root.
- 03
Reposition the international story as a state-of-Karnataka product, not a generic global beauty brand. Geography is the moat. Distribute through India House in London, Karnataka tourism offices, Indian consulates - soft-power channels, not multi-brand retail.
- 04
Redesign packaging within strict heritage constraints. Keep the green-and-gold. Keep the Sharabha. Reset the typography hierarchy and strip four decades of accreted compliance text.
- 05
Publish an annual Sandalwood Report - sustainable sourcing, forest replenishment, the GI tag, the science behind santalol. The brand has the best transparency story in Indian beauty and tells it the worst.
the first 90 days
Tour the Bangalore factory and the Mysore sandalwood forests. Read the Karnataka assembly debates of the last twenty years - every few years the state legislature debates KSDL's future, and the institutional memory lives in those transcripts. Present at the Industries Department, not just the KSDL board. This is a state-government decision before it is a marketing one.
the team we'd assemble
- StrategyONNOFF
- Brand ArchitectureONNOFF
- Identity & PackagingSimran
- Government affairsExternal advisor with PSU experience
what we don't know yet
Whether the Industries Department can balance short-term political mandates with generational brand custody. The state has laid out an aggressive roadmap targeting a ₹5,000 crore turnover by 2030, driving short-term commercial choices like mass-market celebrity endorsements. The operational risk is whether a bureaucratic apparatus can understand that a century-old royal legacy cannot be scaled like a modern venture-backed startup without breaking its cultural seal.
this is unsolicited. read it that way.
If you're at Mysore Sandal Soap and want to talk - hello@onnff.in