In the business of essential flavours

After working in the corporate sector for 10 years and having zeal to start something on her own Hyderabad based Meenal Sharma founded 'Mystic Aura'; she makes the essential oils and markets them and is all set to take them another level. She wants to take aromatherapy and her products to the international market. A big step indeed, but Meenal is all set to put in her efforts to make it a success.

Sharing the details of starting her company, she relates how she found herself in the world of Aromatherapy, "I worked with the corporate industry for the past ten years and then I wanted to do something on my own. I learnt about aromatherapy from one of my teachers who used to teach me chronic healing and yoga.

Then, I began exploring it even further and I began developing products that will bring alternative medicine to the hands of the homemakers. Aromatherapy is the way you can do it; you have essential oils and blends for it. The way that you use them matters, more than what you are using. I started making essential oil blends from three years and since then I have seen lot of positive outcomes with them. I decided to bring chronic aromatherapy to commercial market and make it available to people."

She describes her products in detail, "I make individual essential oils like for example it takes 50 roses to get one drop of oil. The smell that you get in the rose would come with one ingredient in the plant which is basically the essential oil which is made from the soul of the plant. That is why it has all the energy properties. The kind of energy it has is the loving energy which is what my product 'Abundance' is about. It can be found on Amazon website."

Having 50 essential oils with her she uses to blend them. The flavours are sourced from natural produce from across the country. Abundance and Harmony are two of the bestselling products. "If you have these around you it will become a default state of wellbeing."Meenal is currently selling her products online; she would soon be launching her products in the US, Canada and Mexico.

She has been working on this start up for more than a year and she also had to overcome challenges that came her way. "I think the biggest challenge has been that people do not come to use the alternative medicine until and unless they are in pain for a long time. So, I have a lot of products that have the ability to heal the joint pains and treat insomnia. The problem with people is that they go for the Allopathic medicine.

I would say that there is lot of lack of awareness. For myself it was to drop out from my work and take this start up as a full time thing. You have to shift the mind-set from monthly income to understanding the cash flow. I have to take help from the government to approve the essential oils for which 'We Hub' was helpful and another help is from the AIDWA who helped I giving me the right contacts."

There are seven people who work with Meenal. They are all trained in yoga and meditation.

The 35-year- old entrepreneur who works hard for her products to be recognised says, "My family was aware that I always wanted to be on my own. I had my support system; the reason why I could think of starting my own business was I had a very solid support even when I was working. It is a great advantage has your family support. The way my husband and me define women empowerment is that we get out of our way."

About the future of Mystic Aura she shares, "I think the essential oils have a lot of scope, I keep getting suggestions to branch it to cosmetics, but that is not a reason for this start up to begin. Cosmetics become the buy products, I just want to concentrate on essential oils and I have a lot of corporate clients who take signature fragrance from me. I would continue to the same work as there is a lot of scope."