How Kaya is strategising to be future relevant for its younger audiences

Kaya Ltd provides customised and personalised skin and hair care solutions through over 70 Kaya Clinics across India. Kaya delivers flawless skin and healthy hair through expert skin and hair care solutions that includes services in the areas of Acne/Acne-scar Reduction, Brightening, Pigmentation, Anti-Aging, Laser Hair Reduction, etc. along with regular beauty enhancement services.

Recently, the brand launched their new identity. This new purpose driven, Gen Z ethos inspired, digital-first brand identity reaffirms their authority in the industry and represents a shift that will boost Kaya to reach yet another pinnacle for building an expert skincare, bodycare and haircare destination of the future. The new brand narrative is inspired by its young customers – Gen Zs and Millennials. Kaya truly is India’s ultimate skin and beauty destination that curates alleviated personalisation to help customers discover products and services that are right for their unique selves.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Samyukta Ganesh Iyer, VP and Head of Marketing, Kaya, speaks about their new brand identity and narrative, as well as the various initiatives that the brand is planning to engage with their customers.

Please tell us more about the new Kaya brand identity that was launched a few months back. What was the purpose and how do you plan to leverage the new brand identity and how will this benefit the brand?

Launched 18 years ago, Kaya is a one-of-a-kind beautiful bespoke experience crafted by our expert 100+ dermats across our 70+ clinics in 22 cities pan India. We offer 600+ services and 60+ products to help our consumers achieve all their skin desires. We are not a parlour, a spa, a salon – we are Kaya, an expert-led aesthetic world class experience for India. We have always been ahead of the curve, a visionary brand with high dermat expertise, state of art techniques and technology, innovative R&D that come together to bring the latest from the world of beauty and aesthetics.

The new brand narrative is inspired by its young customers – Gen Zs and Millenials. Being future relevant for our younger audiences is about empowering them with the freedom of “choice” to find “their own best beautiful”. It’s inclusive, it’s individualistic, it’s about the culture of “you do you” as you know best and Kaya is here to help you every step of the way in your journey in the manner of your choosing – in-clinic, online, services, products – we have a holistic offering for all your skin desires wherever and whenever and however you would like for Kaya to be there for you. This new purpose driven, Gen Z ethos inspired, digital-first brand identity reaffirms our authority in the industry and represents a shift that will boost Kaya to reach yet another pinnacle for building an expert skincare, bodycare and haircare destination of the future.

The pandemic has disrupted every other business. What has been the impact for Kaya and how did you navigate during these times and still manage to market your product offerings?

Kaya is an omnichannel brand. We have 70+ clinics in 22+ cities. We have established presence across marketplaces like Amazon, Nykaa and Myntra. During these uncertain times, we elevated our digital experiences via collaborations – Cult Fit, Cred. Our digitisation mirrors offline customisation via an all-new AI assessment tool on the website – shop.kaya.in. The website reflects the changing expectations and aspirations of the new consumer, customized to individual needs.

Kaya has a 60+ strong world class product portfolio, crafted on the strength of processed natural ingredients and actives with guaranteed efficacy from our 100+ dermats. Our product mix pans across categories, skin types, age groups and varied self-love wishes from youth elixirs to sun protectors to super hydrators to gentle products for sensitive skin to acne fighters to fun formats like masks, peels to pampering hair and body essentials, DIY kits, Kaya has it all. Our dermats also offer web consults from the comfort of your home.

What has been the role of technology in your business? With the rapid transformation of digital, how has Kaya adapted to the digital world and brought in new technology to boost the business?

Kaya is a digital first brand and has always been highly interactive. We speak to our consumers one on one and digital offers us a great way to have deep conversations with our consumers. It opens up channels of communication to create awareness, create new standards, answer FAQs and finally allows for them to come to us into our clinics. It’s a beautifully integrated system that harnesses the power of digital and online marketing to invite our consumers into our offline world to help them experience Kaya at its finest in a truly customized style.

In the personal skincare solution business, brand ambassadors and influencers play an important role. How have you leveraged their equity and expertise to build the equity of the brand further?

Kaya’s approach to influencer marketing is very unique, it is authentic. Our content strategy is based on communal dialogues in a 3-pronged approach: dermat speak (expert), influencer experientials (in-clinic and product immersions), and customer testimonials. This creates a very real refreshingly simple yet elevated original content experience leading to great quality creative output.

What are some of the new initiatives and marketing innovations that you have introduced to increase the footfalls in your various centres as there is still a fear among many to enter malls and beauty salons?

Kaya’s narrative strategy borrows from the DNA of our brand – the 3Es of social:

Empathetic
Engaging
Energised

Our consumer conversations are light, friendly, easy, expert driven, high levels of care oozing out of our pores (digitally speaking), so reflective of our beautiful brand Kaya. Our digital footprint on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, D2C platform are – warm, inviting, welcoming, inclusive and very informative (dermat led).

We have crafted an entire narrative around the most important theme – what happens at Kaya? What is the Kaya experience? What does Kaya Life mean? How does it make our consumers feel at every touch point as a brand that embraces all the senses to create that beautiful, luxurious and meaningfully designed experience for every Kaya consumer? This essence has been captured in a lovely campaign called Experience #TheKayaLife. A natural evolution of this campaign transcended into the digital realm taking the Kaya Life into the comfort of consumer homes via dermat consults and beautifully crafted products on our D2C: shop.kaya.in. This campaign Experience – #TheKayaLife@Home – opened up avenues for our customers to immerse in the Kaya experience 24x7.

The next stage of this campaign delved into how you can experience the safest shopping experience with #KayaSafe. An entire series that showcased our 60+ safety standards, our UVC sanitisation protocols, our digitisation journeys even in the offline space from booking appointments to payments to receiving maintenance packages at home, our 100% vaccinated staff, constant health monitoring of staff and clients to ensure the highest levels of safety in the lap of luxury.

What has been your engagement strategy with your audience? Has digital been your main focus to keep your brand top of mind?

Kaya is an expert brand. Our expertise lies with our 100+ super skinfluencers – our highly qualified dermats. Our dermats are unique – they understand skin from a deeply rooted scientific perspective and beautifully combine it with their heightened sense of aesthetic artistry. They are truly master artists at work and our consumers come to us for this unique gifted experience that is like none other!

Video has been a critical component. Our dermats are leading conversations through live sessions, reels, videos across digital platforms to showcase our experts: as our USP has always been our dermat led expertise.

Kaya truly is India’s ultimate skin and beauty destination that curates alleviated personalisation to help customers discover products and services that are right for their unique selves.