Himalaya Brand Guidelines: From the Himalaya Drug Company to Himalaya Wellness, Bengaluru

A founder, a town and two founding dates.

Himalaya began in Dehradun, in what was then British India, under its founder M. Manal. The founding date differs between sources. The company’s chairman’s message on its website says its journey began in 1930, and English Wikipedia gives the same year, while Outlook Business wrote in January 2017 that the Himalaya Drug Company was founded by M Manal in 1934. This guide gives both.

The company’s own account of its start is a family story. Its website says the founder’s mother pawned her only bangles to support his plan, and that as a young man he cycled through the forests around Dehradun learning about plants from local practitioners, before the company produced its tablet. Outlook Business put the idea more plainly in 2017: Manal believed that turning powders, mixes and herbs into tablets would make traditional remedies easier to take.

The business moved and grew in stages. English Wikipedia says the company moved to Bombay, now Mumbai, in the 1950s, and that in 1975 the founder’s son, Meraj Manal, started a manufacturing unit in Bangalore, now Bengaluru, which helped it expand production and go international. Bengaluru is where the company is based today, according to English Wikipedia. It also says that in 1955 the company introduced Liv.52, the pharmaceutical product that became its flagship, and that in 1996 it entered the United States market.

The family has stayed in charge. Outlook Business described Meraj Manal as chairman in 2017 and quoted the chief executive, Philipe Haydon, who had risen from medical representative to the top job in 2007, as saying the company received buyout offers from multinationals but would remain privately held. The company’s website in 2026 says the Himalaya Wellness group remains family owned and professionally managed.

From pharmacy shelves to bathroom shelves.

For most of its history Himalaya was a pharmaceutical company. Outlook Business quoted Philipe Haydon in 2017 as saying it had been “pretty much a pharmaceutical company till 2001,” with almost all of its business coming from that side, before management decided to diversify around the turn of the millennium.

Personal care became the larger story. According to Outlook Business, the company’s neem face wash was launched in the early 2000s, around 2002 and 2003, and was sold at the start through chemist shops before general and modern trade stores picked it up. The same 2017 report traced the move into baby care to 2004, a range for mothers to 2015 and a wellness division to 2016, and said the personal-care side had added oral care, hair care and men’s products. English Wikipedia lists the company’s output as pharmaceuticals, personal care, baby care, well-being, nutrition and products for animals.

The brand has also had its own shops. Outlook Business reported in January 2017 that Himalaya had 110 own stores in India, alongside chemist, general trade and modern trade distribution. The company had four subsidiaries at that time, according to the same report, in Bengaluru, Singapore, Houston and Dubai.

Its advertising is easier to follow in the trade press. In November 2021 ET BrandEquity reported a television commercial for Himalaya Lip Balm made as part of the brand’s “Khush Raho Khushal Raho” campaign, and in June 2022 it reported a brand film for Himalaya Wellness Company created with the agency FCB Bangalore. In September 2025 ET Retail reported that the company was building digital-first products such as trial kits, curated regimes and packs for quick-commerce delivery, using its own direct-to-consumer website as a test bed, with growth across oral care, hair care, wellness and pet care.

Packaging has changed too. In February 2026 the marketing magazine afaqs! reported that Himalaya BabyCare had introduced a refreshed pack design across its whole Gentle Baby Care range, describing a cleaner, modern visual language and clearer labelling, supported by a digital film in Hindi with versions in other Indian languages.

How the category presents itself.

India’s beauty and personal-care brands range from names that began inside old industrial groups to labels that started on their own websites. Lakmé was incorporated in December 1952 as a Tata company, according to Trent, the retailer that the original company became, and its brands passed to Hindustan Lever, now Hindustan Unilever, in 1998, Business Today reported. Dabur says on its corporate site that it started operations in Calcutta in 1884.

Some newer brands describe themselves as digital-first. Honasa Consumer, the owner of Mamaearth, calls itself a “digital-first house of brands” on its corporate website, and says Mamaearth began in 2016. Sugar Cosmetics sold only through its own website and a marketplace partner until 2017, Inc42 reported in 2020, before moving into general trade, large-format stores in malls and its own shops.

Shops and counters remain part of the picture. Sugar’s chief executive told the trade magazine Retail4Growth in 2023 that the brand used exclusive outlets, shop-in-shop counters and multi-brand stores, and that it changes its visual merchandising every year. Lakmé has tied its name to a runway since 2000, when the Fashion Design Council of India and IMG brought it in as title sponsor of a new fashion week, The Tribune reported in 2025.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: when and where it began, who founded and owns it, which named product lines and campaigns it publishes, and how it presents itself in packs, logos and stores. Where a fact rests only on a company’s own pages, the text says so, and the palettes and typefaces shown are an unofficial interpretation rather than any brand’s own.

A new company name, the same family.

The company is now called Himalaya Wellness Company. English Wikipedia gives its former name as the Himalaya Drug Company, the name Outlook Business still used in January 2017. By November 2021 ET BrandEquity was quoting executives of Himalaya Wellness Company, and the new name has run through its campaigns, appointments and packaging news since then.

The group sits under a holding company abroad. The chairman’s message on the company website says the parent is Himalaya Global Holdings Ltd., which oversees wholly owned subsidiaries in several countries through a management arm, Himalaya Global Management Ltd. English Wikipedia says Himalaya Global Holdings is headquartered in the Cayman Islands and has regional head offices in Dubai, Singapore and Houston as well as Bengaluru, and that the company’s products are sold in 106 countries.

The brand name itself has been simplified over time. In the 2020s the trade press has mostly referred to the brand simply as Himalaya, with sub-brands such as Himalaya BabyCare and named products such as Himalaya Lip Balm.

For a design guide, Himalaya shows how a long-lived family company can carry one name from a tablet maker in Dehradun to bathroom and baby-care shelves, and change its company name without changing the brand people ask for. Compare Dabur, another long-established Indian consumer company, and Biotique, a founder-owned Indian brand from 1992. For this guide we use a pine green, a neem-leaf green and mist-white neutrals with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Himalaya’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.