With Maaté, Priyanka Raina brings an all-natural approach to baby care
Priyanka C Raina launched Maaté, a premium, all-natural baby care brand, by tapping into Indian culture and practices that are rich in wellness solutions, to provide the best care to a child.
When Priyanka C Raina established the Gracia Raina Foundation along with her husband cricketer Suresh Raina in 2017, her aim was to empower women, in and on the cusp of their reproductive phase.
Her desire to serve women from an early stage led her to launch Maaté, a premium natural baby care brand in September 2019.
Priyanka has been working on Maaté for the past three years with a focus on providing premium, natural, and wellness-based products for babies.
“My stride to ensure better change and motherhood has given me a keen sensibility for every mother’s and baby’s needs, and my stance towards using all-natural ingredients made me launch Maaté,” she says.
Inspired by Ayurveda
The entrepreneur believes new mothers seek guidance from older women on how to nurture the baby in the best possible ways because they face so many unknowns and dilemmas. For Maaté, she looked deep into Indian culture and practices that are rich in wellness solutions to provide the best care to a child with products that do not use any chemicals or toxic elements.
“All products are produced using modern techniques, inspired by Ayurvedic recipes. The extraction of herbs happens via manual processes by women trained in the skills of herb extracting, blending, and storing. Our GMP-certified facility is situated in a rustic, natural abode, far from industrial areas and city pollution in Madurai district,” Priyanka says.
The power of nature
Maaté offers products under three categories: Nourish, that has a body massage oil and hair massage oil; Cleanse comprising a hair cleanser, and body wash; and Comfort, that features a body butter and face wash.
All the products use all-natural ingredients like green gram, fenugreek, neem leaf extracts, oats, saffron oil, kokum butter, chamomile oil, and many others that have known healthcare properties. The prices start at Rs 1,099 and are available through the startup’s website, maate.in.
In a market burgeoning with baby care products how does Maaté plan to break ground? Priyanka is banking on the natural power of her products to attract new mothers and parents.
“Maaté is committed to bringing the pristine power of nature to all our customers, extracting its best essence in our products. Driven by our ethics and values, we continually generate quality and authenticity through conscious efforts. In a market obsessed with one-stop solutions, Maaté's range of products is specially formulated and tested to provide precise and targeted benefits for your baby. We focus on ensuring authentic health benefits for your child. Artificial additives, fragrances, and colours are not added to enhance the product's cosmetic allure,” she says.
Reducing carbon footprint
To add to the holistic solution, Maaté also felt it was necessary to give back and help in reducing the carbon footprint. All products are either packed in glass containers or high-grade BPA-free PETG bottles, which can be reused and 100 percent recycled.
When manufacturing glass bottles, spray paint is used for the distinct Maaté Pearl white shade, which is achieved by using water-soluble spray paint techniques. This advanced technology does not use any chemical-based paints. Even the cartons used to package products are made from certified paper and high-grade, chemical-free ink.
Maaté also works closely with the Gracia Raina Foundation (GRF) to empower women, and enable them to make informed choices about their health. GRF follows a lifecycle approach to help women and young girls, engaging through various culture-sensitive programmes on adolescent health, maternal health, and gender sensitisation.
Is it difficult being a woman entrepreneur?
“Being a woman and mother has helped me a lot to understand and deliver on the needs of motherhood and childcare much better for a brand like Maaté. Before starting my entrepreneurial journey, my corporate experience and exposure to work with the best leaders around the world has given me the opportunity to add a lot to my ventures.”
Priyanka also outlines her future plans for Maaté and the Gracia Raina Foundation.
“With Maaté, the focus is to establish the brand further through several channels while continuing to build trust and relationships with parents on providing the best and honest solutions in baby care. For The Gracia Raina Foundation, apart from reaching out to more mothers and adolescents across India, we also plan to work on providing a digital platform for youth pan-India where they can freely get in touch with our health experts for reproductive health concerns.
We will also be working on strengthening our Women in Prison project in terms of reachability as well as measurability,” Priyanka says.
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)
