Every minute, Chāmpo sells a bottle of its Pitta Growth Serum, a scalp treatment designed to encourage hair growth. It is the kind of stat every beauty business dreams of and one Chāmpo that has achieved in just four years. So what’s the secret? In part, it is that its founder Kuldeep Knox, has created a product that addresses a problem many people (including women) have, but few brands actually address: hair loss.
A number of years back, Knox started to experience drastic hair thinning. Quickly, she realised that many of the women she knew had also gone through the same. ‘My experience of hair thinning just really knocked my self confidence,’ Knox tells me over a call from her office in London, ‘and it made me realise how important a hair is to self-identity.’
Chāmpo is the fastest growing hair brand in the UK
‘I started talking to friends of mine and I was really surprised that pretty much every single woman I spoke to was also suffering with hair loss concerns, but there wasn't a product on the market that was high performance, natural, and also looked like something we wanted to have on our bathroom shelves.’ So, Knox set out to create the product herself. How exactly she was going to do that though, didn’t become clear until a visit from her grandmother. ‘It was during the time of my own hair thinning that grandmother visited from India,’ Knox says. ‘I noticed that she just had the most incredible long, dark, thick hair even though she was in her late 70s, so I started speaking to her about her hair secrets and the Ayurvedic ingredients and rituals that she'd been using. That was the moment I really started my own personal wellness journey.’
Knox began researching the techniques her grandmother taught her, and quickly discovered that they derived from ancient teachings of Ayurveda. The vision for Chāmpo suddenly became clear, and Knox spent the next eighteen months working with expert trichologists and natural chemists on over 150 rounds of formulations to develop six products that set a new benchmark for what natural haircare performance could really be.
To those unfamiliar with Ayurveda and its relation to hair care, Knox describes it thus: ‘Ayurveda is an ancient healing system that encompasses yoga, diet, massage, herbal remedies and looks at health holistically, focusing on prevention rather than cure. Ayurveda uses three different doshas to describe different body and character types and tailor recommendations to each. With Chāmpo, we’ve channelled this Ayurvedic diagnostic system to tailor haircare to the specific needs of different hair types: Pitta, Kapha and Vitta.’
Pitta products are for fine, delicate hair that needs strengthening and protection. The Pitta dosha’s element is fire, a consumer of energy, and Pitta hair types are associated with hair that has been depleted and worn by environmental and emotional factors. As such, they are formulated with strengthening haritaki fruit extract to thicken hair and sandalwood to kickstart circulation at the scalp.
Then there’s Kapha for thick, heavy hair that may be oily and frizzy. The Kapha dosha, associated with earth and water, represents imbalance and as such is designed to protect against humidity and pollution, while also treating excess oil production from the scalp with turmeric root extract, whilst ends are softened with a mild form of coconut oil. Finally, there’s Vitta for damaged, lacklustre hair, damaged by heat styling and sun exposure. It’s also formulated with coconut to offer a heavy dose of moisture, plus smoothing macadamia seed oil.
Beyond the dosha shampoos and conditioners, there is a brow serum that, almost miraculously, thickens brows and fills in gaps within a few weeks time. There’s also a styling cream, and new hair growth supplements that taste so good it’s hard to eat just the recommended two per day. And then, of course, there is the serum. The hero product that has earned Chāmpo its cult following. Formulated with caffeine, creatine and haritaki extract, the serum visibly increases the density of hair within a month of regular use. You don’t have to wait that long to see some results though, with hair looking smoother and shinier after only a few uses.
And therein lies the ultimate reason behind Chāmpo’s meteoric success: these products actually work. As Knox herself says, ‘being announced as the fastest growing beauty company in the UK was such a proud moment for us because it took years of consistent, fast and profitable growth. I was really determined to create something that would deliver results to customers in a moment of need, because I know from my own experience how much hair loss can knock your self confidence. So I’m really proud that it's helped hundreds of thousands of people.’
