Why we're building 78 Labs.

We're Aashish and Rishitha. We've spent over a decade in the US. We're building 78 Labs from here, and from Hyderabad, where Aashish grew up and where our manufacturer is.

78 Labs exists because of a decision we made about where we want our kids to grow up.

We still miss our parents. We still miss our family. We still miss the friends we grew up with. We want our kids to feel that everyday warmth of grandparents, cousins, neighbours dropping in. And we want their grandparents to enjoy the kids' childhood while they're still healthy enough to be present for it.

So we made the call: we're moving back to India.

Once we did, we started looking — at everything we'd need on the other side. Some of it was easy. India has a wave of new family-run brands building beautifully made things at fair prices: home goods, kitchenware, furniture, fans. The kind of stuff you'd happily switch to.

Skincare wasn't on that list.

Every trip home, one of us would pack a tube of Supergoop Unseen Sunscreen. Sometimes two. Friends would ask for it. Cousins would ask for it. Rishitha's mother, who has spent decades in Indian sun, asked for it.

The texture is the reason. Anhydrous — no water in the formula, just silicones and UV filters. Goes on invisible. Doesn't pill under makeup. Doesn't break down by 2pm. Nothing like the sticky, chalky, white-cast sunscreens most of us grew up with and quietly stopped using by college.

Abroad it costs ₹3,000+ a tube. In India — despite being a country with more sun than most — this category doesn't really exist at a price real people can justify. The premium brands import it and mark it up. The mass brands don't make it, because anhydrous silicone bases are harder to manufacture and the margin math is tighter.

You can't pack five years of daily sunscreen in a suitcase. You can't bring back enough for your kids, your parents, the friends who'll ask. And we didn't want to spend the rest of our life there missing something this fundamental.

So we decided: we'd build it. Not just for us — for everyone making the same calculation. A clean skincare brand made in India, for India, starting with the daily sunscreen we'd want for ourselves, our kids, and our parents.

We spent six months on the research. We talked to four contract manufacturers. We read ingredient lists until they blurred together. We got sample quotes, tested formulation directions, and walked through the economics of batch sizes, MRP rules, shipping zones, and returns. Samples are now in our hands; our family in Hyderabad is testing them in real Indian heat. We're writing about every honest data point on our journal at 78labs.in/journal.

What we ended up with: a daily anhydrous sunscreen, made in India by a contract partner we trust, in the same silicone-base category that made us fall in love with sunscreen in the first place. Lab-certified efficacy numbers will be published here once testing is complete — we don't make claims we can't back yet. We priced it at ₹549. The first 90 days of buyers get it at ₹499, and they keep that price forever.

We're calling those first buyers Founder Members. There's no membership card, no app, no quarterly newsletter. Just a promise: if you take a chance on us early, we owe you the best price we ever offer, for as long as we sell sunscreen.

What we're not.

We're not dermatologists. We're not chemists. We're not cosmetic industry veterans. Aashish is a product manager. Rishitha is a product manager. Our day jobs taught us how to ship things carefully and write clearly, but they didn't teach us how to formulate sunscreen. Our manufacturer does that, and we've leaned hard on their expertise.

We're also not the cheapest you can buy. If price is the only thing that matters to you, there are Indian sunscreens under ₹300. We don't have a bad thing to say about them — some of them are fine. We're building for the person who wants the imported-texture experience without the imported-price experience.

How we'll work.

We'll write openly. We're keeping a journal at 78labs.in/journal — samples arriving, batches running, decisions we got wrong, decisions we got right. It won't be polished. It won't be Instagram-optimized. It'll be honest, and dated, and probably slightly boring in the way real things are.

We'll answer email. hello@78labs.in is a real inbox we both read. If you have a question before launch, send it. We'll reply.

We'll be patient about launch. We'd rather ship a product we're proud of in six months than a product we're nervous about next week. If you're on the waitlist, you'll hear from us when things are actually happening — and only then.

If any of this resonates, join the waitlist below.

— Aashish & Rishitha, 78 Labs