• Rovini Illukkumbura on rethinking beauty for younger consumers and building Forestkind around what young skin and hair need

For younger consumers today, skincare looks markedly different from what it did even a decade ago. Teenagers are increasingly familiar with ingredients such as niacinamide, salicylic acid, and hyaluronic acid, skincare routines have become part of the language of social media, and access to global beauty trends means young consumers often know exactly what they are looking for long before they walk into a store.

The problem, according to entrepreneur and marketer Rovini Illukkumbura, is that the products being sold to them have not always evolved at the same pace.

“There are lots of brands talking to youth, and there is an aesthetic proposition around youth, but when you look at the products, it is different,” she explained, pointing to a beauty industry where younger consumers are frequently treated as a marketing demographic rather than a group with distinct skincare and haircare needs.

It was this gap that led Illukkumbura to create Forestkind, a new Sri Lankan skincare, haircare, and body care brand developed primarily with younger consumers in mind. Launched with 13 products across the three categories, Forestkind also draws on Illukkumbura’s 15 years of experience building brands internationally, and a long-standing interest in how the beauty industry speaks to different consumers.

Building brands from the ground up

Illukkumbura’s professional background has taken her across markets including Saudi Arabia, the wider Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, and Turkey, with roles involving brands under companies including Unilever and Kraft Heinz. Working across different categories and markets gave her an understanding not simply of advertising products, but of how brands influence habits and become part of everyday life.

Her entrepreneurial ambitions, however, had existed alongside her corporate career for some time.

Her first venture was Islander, the Sri Lankan water brand she launched in 2018 while still working overseas. She described it as her ‘practice brand,’ a passion project that taught her the realities of building supply chains and taking a product to market. Today, Islander is available across retail and several hotels around Sri Lanka.

Her corporate career provided the other side of that education. Illukkumbura recalled being ‘pushed into the deep end’ early at Unilever by her mentor, while her later work with Heinz exposed her to brand building at a global level. “Being involved with Heinz at that global stage really sharpened that European and Western style of brand building, and how you create habits and influence people to uplift their lifestyle,” she said.

Those influences are visible in both Islander and Forestkind. Neither, she observed, immediately presented itself as a stereotypically Sri Lankan brand, with their identities instead carrying what she described as a more global “handwriting”.

That does not mean ignoring the local consumer. Quite the opposite. “I’m not trying to change the local taste. I’m simply trying to elevate the look and touch that we are exposed to,” she said.

Having moved back to Sri Lanka in March, Illukkumbura now sees the country she grew up in through the additional lens of a marketer entering a new market. While it was home, she explained, she was still learning how contemporary Sri Lankan consumers behaved, what they responded to, and where the opportunities lay.

For Forestkind, this meant beginning with a clearly defined audience rather than attempting to speak to everyone at once.

Formulated for youth, good for everyone

Forestkind’s proposition is summed up by Illukkumbura as “formulated for youth, good for everyone”.

The distinction matters because, in her view, much of what is presented as youth-focused beauty is still primarily youth-focused communication. Packaging becomes brighter, language becomes younger, and campaigns reflect the aesthetic of the demographic, while the underlying formulation may not have been developed specifically around younger skin, hair, and lifestyles.

Forestkind approaches the question from the product backwards. Haircare is one example. In a tropical country where people may wash their hair frequently, Illukkumbura argues that cleansing needs to be gentle enough to avoid unnecessarily stripping the scalp and hair. Forestkind’s shampoos and conditioners therefore combine cleansing with oils and moisturising ingredients, while its hair masks offer a more intensive treatment.

The philosophy extends to body care. Illukkumbura pointed out that young people in Sri Lanka contended with heat, sweat, and active lifestyles, meaning a body wash should offer more than fragrance. Forestkind consequently uses ingredients such as salicylic acid, while its body polishes combine gentle exfoliation with oils and butters. 

“We’re trying to bring it back to basics,” Illukkumbura explained. “Let us take the dirt off, but while doing that, let us treat you while you clean.”

The skincare range currently begins with what she considers the foundations of a routine: cleanser, moisturiser, and sunscreen. “Today, a skincare routine has seven steps. We’ve started with the most basic: wash your face with a cleanser, have a moisturiser, and then sunscreen. Those are the three mandatory steps,” she said. 

“When a 13-year-old wants a skincare routine, that is where you start. This also means knowing what younger skin does not need. Retinol, for example, has become one of the beauty industry’s most widely discussed ingredients because of its role in addressing signs of ageing. That does not mean it belongs in every routine, particularly for young consumers.”

Sun protection is another area where Illukkumbura wants to build greater understanding, particularly in a country so close to the equator. Forestkind’s Dew Drop sunscreen offers SPF 50 PA+++ protection, with a lightweight finish designed to make regular use easier.

Changing the beauty conversation

That educational element has become one of the most important parts of Forestkind’s identity.

Within weeks of launching, Illukkumbura said the brand had begun receiving messages from consumers asking for advice about products and routines. “Within three weeks of launch, people were coming into our messages asking for advice, and that is where we want to be because we want to be educational and have that trust placed in us,” she said.

Illukkumbura’s approach to the relationship between natural ingredients and cosmetic science is similarly pragmatic. When developing the brand, she considered whether Forestkind should follow a more explicitly Ayurvedic or plant-led direction. 

“There were two routes. You can be very Ayurvedic and plant-led in your approach, but the truth is that alone won’t help the skin in every way we need,” she said. “Science exists for a reason, to make things better.”

The name Forestkind grew from that balance. ‘Forest’ represents the plant-derived side of the formulations, while ‘kind’ refers to mankind and the scientific element behind the products. There was also, she added, a deliberate emphasis on kindness in how the brand spoke to its audience.

For Illukkumbura, none of this requires positioning Forestkind in opposition to the multinational companies that dominate the beauty and personal care industry. Her own career was shaped by those businesses and the training they provided. 

Instead, she sees the advantage of building a smaller independent brand as being the time and attention it is able to give to consumer education, while drawing on the discipline of the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) world in defining audiences and building products around them.

Balancing those ambitions with affordability has been one of Forestkind’s biggest challenges, particularly when Illukkumbura was unwilling to reduce active ingredients simply to reach a lower price. 

“In a market like Sri Lanka, you need to be desirable as much as affordable,” she said. “My biggest challenge was not compromising on the active ingredients, while at the same time making it affordable to the Gen Z customer we’re after.”

Growing with its audience

The current 13-product range is only Forestkind’s starting point. The brand will gradually expand its skincare and haircare routines, with Illukkumbura stressing that future formulations would continue to account for Sri Lanka’s humidity, climate, and lifestyle rather than simply reproducing products developed for other markets. 

“We will be growing, but it will be really formulated, not simply copying formulas from the global stage,” she shared.

Yet for all the science, strategy, and years of marketing experience behind the business, Illukkumbura also wants Forestkind to retain something considerably simpler. “I want the brand to be experiential,” she said. “I want people to smile when they use it.”

For a generation surrounded by beauty marketing from local and international brands, Forestkind’s proposition is ultimately a simple one: understand who a product is for, what is inside it, and what it is meant to do. For Illukkumbura, that also means proving there is space for a Sri Lankan beauty brand built around international standards without losing sight of the consumers using it at home.