By Anurag Sharma
Sandhya Shekar has long been regarded as one of India’s most celebrated makeup artists — a name synonymous with artistry that harmonises tradition with contemporary aesthetics. Over the years, she has collaborated with global fashion houses, iconic publications, and some of the most recognisable personalities in film and fashion. Yet, what sets her apart is not just her craft, but her philosophy: a belief that true beauty lies in authenticity, simplicity, and an unshakeable respect for the natural self.
That same ethos inspired her latest chapter — the co-founding of Mokae Beauty with photographer Vikas Vasudev. More than a brand, Mokae is an extension of Sandhya’s life and values: a clean, effective, and soulful line that empowers individuals to embrace themselves fully. “For me, Mokae is rooted in my years of listening to the women who sat in my chair,” she reflects. “Their stories, their challenges, their longing for products that spoke to their needs — that’s what shaped Mokae.”
Beauty Beyond the Surface
Born and raised in Udupi, a coastal town in South India, Sandhya’s formative years were steeped in culture, tradition, and the lush beauty of the tropics. Those influences, she says, shaped not only her approach to beauty but also to life itself. “For me, beauty has never just been about makeup on the face — it’s about how we weave beauty into every part of our lives,” she explains.
Her perspective also comes from working across thousands of faces over the past 15 years. While the industry often projected rigid, one-dimensional ideals, Sandhya noticed a deeper truth: many people, despite their outward beauty, felt disconnected from themselves. “The traditional beauty industry has thrived on fear — fear of aging, fear of imperfection. But I’ve always seen beauty as something that should be celebrated, not hidden,” she says.
At Mokae, that philosophy takes center stage. The brand seeks to move beyond fear-driven narratives, championing instead a space of self-love, inclusivity, and inner connection.
Redefining Standards
Sandhya is candid about the industry’s limitations, particularly in India where fair skin has historically been equated with beauty. “You don’t have to be fair, a certain body type, or a certain size to be beautiful,” she insists. Instead, Mokae champions a broader, truer definition of beauty — one that embraces diversity and honours every stage of life.
This outlook also draws from Ayurveda’s philosophy of vitality and prana — the life force energy that sustains mind, body, and soul. For Sandhya, holistic beauty is not about erasing wrinkles or obsessing over routines, but about caring for one’s overall well-being: physical, emotional, and mental. “When we nurture our vitality, beauty naturally radiates from within,” she explains.
The Clean, Conscious Promise
In an era where “clean beauty” is often used loosely — sometimes reduced to marketing jargon — Mokae holds itself to the highest standards. Each product is formulated with 90–95% natural ingredients, aligned with Credo’s globally stringent guidelines, and manufactured in Europe to ensure uncompromising safety and efficacy.
But clean is only part of the equation. Mokae also prioritises performance, challenging the notion that “green” products can’t deliver lasting results. “As a makeup artist, I knew products had to be both safe and high-performing. With Mokae, we’ve been able to create formulations that do both,” Sandhya says proudly.
The brand also extends its responsibility to the environment — from recycled packaging to mindful sourcing — while continuing to explore innovative solutions for a more sustainable future.
Beauty With Intention
For Sandhya, the ultimate goal is clear: to create beauty that empowers rather than intimidates. “I’ve always believed makeup should be a tool of expression, not a mask of fear,” she reflects. Whether it’s crafting a kajal that honours India’s heritage or formulating a mascara designed for longevity without compromise, every Mokae product is a conscious act of care.
Her conviction is rooted in passion, not opportunism. “A lot of people start brands because they spot a gap in the market or see margins. For me, it’s about love — for beauty, for people, and for the experience of transformation.”
With Mokae, Sandhya is not just redefining beauty products — she’s reshaping the very conversation around beauty itself.
Holistic, conscious, and timeless — Sandhya Shekar’s vision ensures that beauty is no longer something we chase, but something we return to within ourselves.
Sandhya Shekar is a celebrated Indian makeup artist renowned for her artistry that merges tradition with contemporary aesthetics. With an illustrious career working with global fashion houses, leading publications, and iconic personalities, Sandhya’s work is defined by its authenticity, simplicity, and deep respect for natural beauty.
Driven by her belief in mindful beauty and inner well-being, she co-founded Mokae Beauty alongside photographer Vikas Vasudev. At Mokae, Sandhya brings her years of experience, insight, and care into curating a clean, effective, and soulful beauty line that empowers individuals to express their truest selves. Her vision bridges the gap between inner wellness and outer radiance, keeping the Indian experience of beauty and self-care at its core.
I would say that for me the brand is an extension of me and I feel that it’s rooted with years of my experience in this particular field and I think it’s also one of the reasons that kind of inspired me to start the brand wherein I saw people on my chair every day, I heard, listened to their stories, I listened to their challenges and problems in terms of what they were facing.
Primarily as I think Indian women in terms of say the lack of choice of colorsor great quality products or safe products as well as say even finding amazing textures.
So I think that comes from my bit of the experience as a makeup artist and having worked with multiple, I’d say thousands of faces in the last 15 years and when it comes to say the cultural influence bit of it, I think I come from a very small town rather village if I were to call it in South India in Mangalore.
I’m from a place called Udupi and I think growing up there I feel I was surrounded by so much of culture day in and day out and I think also so much of beautiful tropical nature. Which has largely influenced my choices in terms of my own well-being and I think it also kind of reflects in the choices of say bringing, in the choices of the way of living as well as integrating beauty into my everyday life just not from the perspective of putting makeup onto my face but how can beauty be brought into each and every element of our life into our everyday right.
I feel if you go to see in and around India as well there is so much beauty around every nook and corner, and it also kind of saddens me somewhere where I feel most of us are longing for the western way of kind of embracing beauty.
Where it’s very manicured but I feel like just travelling around India and being heavily influenced by regional cultures having different friends, family and just travel in general has kind of like deeply touched the cultural aspect of how I identify beauty and how I bring beauty into say my everyday life and in terms of say my own personal experience of beauty I was always very drawn to beauty from the age of I think probably three like as pretty much as I remember I’d say I always played with makeup, I played with colours.
I painted just not you know papers but I also kind of painted my face with those same colours and I felt like I was born for beauty back then it was a different way of embracing it where it was largely connecting to my own beauty and kind of putting, figuring out in terms of how to kind of look my best and feel my best and I think I was also so drawn towards everything that was information related to beauty if I were to say .
So I consumed a lot of that and I think I also kind of channeled it even in a day even in a time when you know there was no social media I was born in the 80s so everything was largely through magazines in terms of inspiration and I think in the 90s it was late 90s for me at least fashion TV and the influence of you know understanding what’s happening globally but I feel personally it started with experimenting with my own beauty .
“ When it came to say the limited products that I had but I think as I’m getting older I feel that there has been like a deeper connection where I’ve kind of lived this life and I’ve been connected to the life of beauty in many of my different lifetimes and yeah I feel like Mokae is just kind of an extension of that I’ve tried to kind of answer all three aspects of the three personal, cultural and past careers that you’ve kind of brought in here but I think also to add to past careers something that just suddenly showed up was I used to be in finance and banking for about three and a half years so technically”
I think not exactly past career but you know suddenly that kind of like came up to me right now while I was answering this Going to your second question in terms of how a beauty brand can challenge and redefine traditional standards of beauty I think being in the beauty industry and following beauty so deeply for so many years almost I’d say 38 years I’m 40 now . I think I feel the beauty industry is very
one-dimensional where it just focuses about beauty from the outside which I think there’s a huge problem with that and as I saw more and more people sit on my chair and having conversations with them I saw how deeply disconnected people were internally and how they were not able to realize the beauty from within and I think as a makeup artist for me I saw immense beauty in all these people but they were not able to look at themselves from that lens and I feel for us at Moke we really want to redefine this where we want to kind of take people on a journey where they’re able to connect with themselves at a much deeper level of being able to let go of whatever their inhibitions of fear is I think the traditional beauty scape always kind of works from a perspective of fear it’s hugely fear driven.
“ I think the other problem that I also see in the beauty industry is I think up until five years ago. or even now I don’t have an exact number but it’s driven by men it’s driven by fear, there’s constant talking about anti-aging, no wrinkles all of this is seen as something that women need to be ashamed of or feel shameful about, and I feel that’s the biggest problem where aging is not really seen as something graceful and beautiful and I feel for us that is where the biggest problem is I think with Mokae we want to kind of redefine the scape with approaching beauty from a space of love and largely from the space of self-love how can we kind of bring that into our life so that we can love ourselves in each and every shape and form and embrace each cycle of our life”.
Hence the way we look so that the true beauty radiates from within and makeup then just becomes a tool for us to kind of enhance whatever we’re feeling at any point in time or even to say express ourselves in terms of the mood that we’re feeling on an everyday basis and I think just touching base on the perspective, context of diverse skin tones and cultural background.
I think again it comes from a very limiting limitation of the standard norms of fair being beautiful especially in a country like India and I feel just going beyond all of that which is you know you don’t have to be fair to look beautiful or you don’t have to look a certain body type or a certain size to be beautiful I think accepting ourselves.
As a whole is what we are trying to do with Mokae I think with going to your next question in regards to the concept of holistic beauty I think it’s a need of the hour like I said more and more people are feeling not enough or not beautiful enough in today’s day and world and this I mean I don’t want you to quote me but I feel I’m talking about some of the most beautiful faces that I’ve worked on in the industry feel the same too and it’s really sad because I feel there is a certain way of the society telling you (that you’re not beautiful enough or you’re not good enough or you’re not fit enough for this role as so and so and there’s constant unrealistic standards that are always set in terms of the way in which especially a woman should look.
I feel with holistic beauty what we’re trying to do is it’s an all rounded way of taking care of yourself. where we’re not really focusing on aging we’re focusing on our vitality or prana which is your life force energy that I think Ayurveda has always kind of emphasized on because I feel if we take care of our vitality on a whole which encompasses your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health then touches upon say exercising, eating right, doing whatever is necessary for us to kind of keep our mental health in check or our emotional health in check.
I feel then we’re feeling great from within it’s not like we’re just only focusing on physically looking a certain size or only focusing on our face which is again everything then is we’re working separately and we’re not really treating this mind, body, soul as one union and I think with holistic beauty that’s what we’re trying to do where all of this is within us and we need to take care of all of that and when we do take care of that I think beauty truly radiates we don’t really have to focus on saying that okay.
I have to do a 10 step skincare routine or I don’t have to go be obsessively worrying about the wrinkle on my face so I think holistic beauty with that we’re focusing largely on how do you kind of take care of the vitality in your life or the vital force or prana in your life and I feel everything else then falls into place when it comes to say the beauty itself radiating from within you Moving to your next question about clean, safe and high performance and how does that foster customer trust and how can we align to ethical and environmental consideration.
I think these days I feel clean again is being used very loosely which I do have a huge problem with because I feel it’s being slapped on because there’s a lot of green washing for the lack of a better word but I think also what is clean right there’s so many different ways of defining clean but I think at Mokae when we say clean we’re talking about high natural ingredient formulations
Wherein most of our formulations have 90-95% of natural ingredients and we have just the right amount of chemicals I’m not saying chemicals is bad but if you’re able to kind of bring in the natural element and find the right balance between nature and chemicals I think that’s a good balance for us at Mokey.
For us the idea of clean here is to ensure that we are providing you the safest product. Our products have been formulated keeping credo guidelines in mind and credo has one of the strictest and stringent formulation policies in the globe as well as in EU.
Our products are also manufactured in Europe because that’s one of the places where I think when it comes to following stringent safety rules they really abide by it We did try manufacturing it in India but when we spoke about clean I think manufacturers winked back at us and said oh you mean clean so there’s a lot of jugaad if I were to use the right word in India and I think that’s what we wanted to stay away from so we are working with the manufacturers in Europe who are following the most stringent safety regimes when it comes to manufacturing.
And I think clean for us also means that ensuring that we are sourcing our ingredients ethically and also we’re keeping environmental considerations so all our packaging is recycled, is being derived from recycled materials.
We’re also trying to actively find solutions in terms of how we can kind of discard these things once the customers have used this, we’re on it, I think as a small company it is kind of taking us time but I think we are kind of being mindful about it And when it comes to say the high performance aspect of it, pretty much around the globe if you see any of the clean brands that we’re talking about globally are not really known for high performance and I think that’s one of the reasons why also people shy away from using clean products because they want their products to last long.
And I think being a makeup artist this is one of the things that I really wanted to kind of bring in which is formulate products that are not only super hyper clean but also are long lasting so and we’re very proud to say that we’ve been able to achieve this with Moke. And I think going back to the safety aspect of clean, I think the reason why we are going all lengths to ensure this is we’re living in an environment that is so contaminated and especially in India I feel most of our big cities are pretty much becoming unlivable.
In terms of say the quality of water, air, you pretty much name it and I think a lot of people and this is again my first hand experience with the number of women that I’ve been meeting every day where I would say every 8 out of 10 women either have hormonal issues, they have allergies, they have things that they’ve gotten intolerant to.
Be it food, be it products, be it things that they were absolutely okay with and a lot of it is because of the kind of environment and the lifestyles that we’re leading today in 2025.
And I think with makeups especially with something that is supposed to kind of make you look good and feel good I think we really wanted to ensure that when it came to Moke they had one less thing to worry about in terms of their everyday products.
So we really wanted it to be safe so that people do not have to worry about am I putting the right thing because especially with makeup like kajal, mascara, lipstick you know you have this product day in and day out and we really wanted our users to be stress free
when it came to using our makeup, I think it’s very important for us to I think especially as founders to really answer the question as to why you started the brand.
For me I’ve been in this industry, I’ve loved beauty ever since I’ve been born if I were to say and I feel there’s such an immense joy in terms of you know really giving this experience and empowering another person with this experience of beauty.
Be it them sitting on my chair getting their makeup done or even if that means you know crafting a beautiful product with I’d say the best of the quality, safety and I think there’s no other way if I were to say but to kind of do all of this consciously. And that’s why I say that it’s very important to answer the question of why founders in the first place have gotten into the business of beauty.
I feel I do meet a lot of other founders this is before I got into the brand and I used to find it really amusing when people said that oh I noticed a gap and that’s how I started it or you know it’s like I thought there were big margins and that’s why I kind of started or gotten into this.
Which I think again like you know why are you doing this as a brand becomes very questionable but I thi
