By The TEP Desk

Most candles disappear once they burn out.

Mevyl's flagship product starts its second life after it melts.

The Bengaluru-based startup has built its brand around body serum candles, products that transform from fragrance candles into warm skincare serums. The idea came to founder Priyanshi Jogani while searching for a birthday gift, but it has since evolved into a business attempting to create an entirely new self-care category in India.

Before launching Mevyl in 2022, Jogani spent years working across brand management, business development, and content. She often describes herself as part of the target audience the company serves, an insight that has shaped everything from product design to marketing.

India's premium beauty and personal care market has expanded rapidly over the past decade as consumers increasingly spend on wellness, skincare, and self-care experiences rather than purely functional products.

This shift has created room for niche brands that focus on rituals, gifting, and premium experiences rather than mass-market utility. According to global consulting firm Kearney, India's luxury beauty market was valued at over a billion dollars in 2024 and is projected to reach $4 billion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 14%.

Mevyl is positioning itself within that trend, sitting somewhere between beauty, fragrance, and wellness, at a price point that makes it accessible without losing its premium feel.

India's beauty shelves are crowded with moisturisers, serums, and perfumes. Most are designed around function. Apply. Absorb. Move on.

What the market largely lacked was a product designed around experience. Not just what it does to your skin, but how it feels to use it.

Mevyl's bet was that Indian consumers were ready for that shift, and that a product combining fragrance, warmth, hydration, and ritual in one format could find a real audience.

At first glance, the body serum candle looks like a luxury candle.

But once lit, it melts into a warm body serum made with a blend of seven oils, shea butter, and soy wax. Instead of discarding the melted wax, users pour it directly onto their skin and massage it in.

The concept draws inspiration from traditional oil massage practices that have long been part of Indian wellness routines. Mevyl's approach combines those ideas with modern product design and premium fragrance experiences.

For many consumers, the concept sounds unusual at first. That unfamiliarity is precisely what makes the product memorable.

The brand has since expanded into solid perfumes inspired by luxury fragrances. Compact, travel-friendly, and alcohol-free, they carry forward the same focus on sensory experience. Solid perfume sets start at Rs 649, while body serum candles are priced around Rs 1,249 to Rs 1,549.

Mevyl runs two tracks.

Direct-to-consumer via its own website and Amazon, targeting a broad base of customers across India. And corporate gifting on the B2B side, where the product's visual appeal and story make it a stronger offering than a standard hamper.

The gifting angle is smart. A candle that turns into a body serum is a more memorable corporate gift than most alternatives, and festive seasons like Diwali and Christmas have historically driven significant order surges for the brand. The company has reportedly been sold out on Amazon every alternate month.

Interestingly, while Tier-I cities were the expected core audience, Mevyl has seen strong traction from smaller towns in Maharashtra and Assam as well. The brand is bootstrapped and operates with a lean team, making candles in small batches to maintain quality control.

One natural advantage of Mevyl's products is that they are visual.

The transformation from candle to serum is easy to demonstrate through short videos and social media content. Rather than relying on claims, the brand can show the experience directly. That is a significant edge in a market where attention is expensive.

Jogani recently appeared in a startup pitch reel that gained traction online, describing Mevyl as a brand making body care "fun, functional and cool." The clip introduced the brand to a wider audience and highlighted something important about how modern consumer businesses grow: distribution increasingly happens through content.

For a product as visually distinctive as a body serum candle, every demonstration is a potential marketing asset.

Despite growing interest in premium self-care, Mevyl still faces real headwinds.

Consumer education is a continuous cost. Every new customer needs to understand the product before they will consider buying it. Premium positioning limits the size of the addressable market. And maintaining product quality while scaling production, especially for something made in small batches with precise formulation requirements, is rarely straightforward.

The bootstrapped company is also navigating the classic early-stage challenge of converting seasonal gifting demand into consistent monthly revenue.

Creating a beauty brand is difficult. Creating a beauty category is even harder.

Many startups enter existing markets and compete on price, speed, or marketing spend. Mevyl has chosen a different path. Rather than improving an existing product, the company is trying to change how consumers think about self-care itself.

Its body serum candle is not simply a candle and not quite a skincare product. It sits somewhere between beauty, wellness, fragrance, and gifting, a positioning that gives it room most beauty brands do not have.

Mevyl's future depends on whether it can convince consumers that a candle can be more than a candle. If it succeeds, the company may find itself owning a category it helped introduce to the Indian market.

Sources: YourStory (January 2025), Mevyl Luxury website (mevyl.com), founder pitch reel. Revenue figures not publicly disclosed by the company. Market size data from Kearney via YourStory.