A fight for the forest: Inside Baby Forest’s battle with luxury Ayurveda giant Forest Essentials

Winter had settled over the city with quiet authority. It sat on metal railings, on stone floors, in the morning air that made people walk faster without realising why. Outside the Delhi High Court, lawyers moved in clusters, black coats pulled tighter, conversations clipped and purposeful.

Inside one of the courtrooms, the cold stopped at the door. Gagan Agarwal felt a film of sweat gather along his forehead. His throat tightened before a single word was spoken. For a moment, he tried to place the feeling. He couldn’t.

He had felt fear before.

Not in 2019—outside the delivery room—pacing, waiting, counting minutes as his first child fought its way into the world. That had been anxiety. Anticipation.

Nor in June 2023 either, when the first legal notice arrived and the fight, still distant then, took shape on paper.

This was different. Inside the courtroom, he wasn’t waiting anymore. He was in it—fighting for his baby.

Inside the courtroom: How close is too close?

As soon as the judge walked in, the murmurs dissolved. The silence tightened.

Agarwal, meanwhile, held his gaze steady. He knew what was on the line. This wasn’t just another hearing. He was fighting for his baby. And he wasn’t here to lose.

The matter was called.

The lawyer for the plaintiff rose first and went straight to the point. This, he told the court, was a case of infringement. It was a case of a younger brand stepping too close.

The argument moved quickly from premise to detail. Both brands, it was argued, operated in the same space—premium Ayurveda. Both drew from the same vocabulary: nature, purity and tradition. And increasingly, both were speaking to the same consumer—young, urban, willing to pay for products they believed were safer and cleaner. But the overlap wasn’t the concern. The real issue was how close they now sat to each other.

Then came the names. Forest Essentials. Baby Forest.

This was the fight.

Forest Essentials had brought Baby Forest to court over the name—Forest—alleging infringement. What began with a legal notice in June 2023 had now turned into a full-blown courtroom battle.

In court, it came down to how the names sounded. Spoken one after the other, the names echoed. That echo sat at the centre of the argument.

In a category built as much on perception as on product, even a degree of similarity can mislead—especially when the purchase isn’t casual, but for a newborn.

To support that claim, examples followed.

First were emails from hospitality partners asking if ‘Baby Forest’ was an extension of Forest Essentials. Then came search results pairing the two names before a full query had even been entered. It was followed by social media comments treating them as part of the same brand family.

Individually, each instance was small. But taken together, they began to point in the same direction.

When the defence rose, the shift was noticeable. At the centre of the dispute, they argued, was a word that could not be claimed on its own. ‘Forest’ was not invented. It was descriptive and widely used, especially in a category built around nature and origin. Granting exclusivity over it, they argued, would stretch trademark protection beyond its intent.

There was another line of argument. Trademarks, the defence said, could not be broken apart. They had to be read as a whole.

And taken that way, ‘Forest Essentials’ and ‘Baby Forest’ did not create the same impression—whether visually, structurally or in how a consumer encountered them.

The forest, and who owns it

To understand why the argument mattered, you need to step back from the courtroom and look at the terrain.

Forest Essentials was not a new entrant testing the waters.

Founded in 2000 by Mira Kulkarni, it had spent over two decades shaping—and in many ways defining—luxury Ayurveda in India. What began as a niche, almost boutique, offering had expanded into a national presence, with more than 150 stores and a strong footprint in luxury hotels.

Reportedly, by FY25, the company had crossed ₹572 crore in operating revenue, with profits of about ₹128 crore. Its baby care line existed but it was a small part of the business, contributing roughly ₹15 crore.

Scale, though, was only part of the story.

Over the years, The Estée Lauder Companies had steadily increased its stake in Forest Essentials, bringing with it global distribution, deeper capital, and a playbook refined across markets.

Across from it stood a much younger company. At the time the dispute began, Baby Forest was doing just over ₹2 crore in revenue.

The gap wasn’t subtle.

In a category where the language itself is shared—nature, purity, Ayurveda—how much of that language can one brand claim? And where does another begin?

This clash between Forest Essentials and Baby Forest feels straight out of The Jungle Book—a Mowgli versus Shere Khan moment, reckons marketing and branding experts. “One is the reigning force in luxury Ayurveda. The other walks in, uninvited and unafraid,” says Ashita Aggarwal, professor of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research. “This isn’t just about products. It’s about who gets to claim the forest,” she says.

India’s babywear market represents a sizeable business opportunity. According to IMARC Group, the market was worth $7.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $11.2 billion by 2034, growing at a compound annual rate of 4.05% during 2026–2034. The research firm identifies rising disposable incomes, expanding online retail and growing demand for premium, branded and organic baby clothing as key drivers.

Forest Essentials built its position slowly—ritual by ritual, bottle by bottle—turning Ayurveda into something aspirational, almost ceremonial. “The forest, in its world, is curated, refined and elevated,” says Aggarwal, adding that Baby Forest arrives with a different instinct. “It brings Ayurveda closer: less ritual and more routine; less distance and more immediacy,” she adds.

But long before courtrooms and contested names, the story began elsewhere.

It started in Agra, Uttar Pradesh. It started inside a family business that ran on routine and predictability more than reinvention.

Agarwal grew up around edible oils. The business ran on volume—procurement, processing, distribution—each part fitting into the next with quiet efficiency. Tankers came in, raw material moved through the system and finished product went out.

It was predictable. And that was the point.

By the time he stepped in, the playbook was already written.

Margins sat at 2%, sometimes less. It was enough to sustain scale, but not enough to create sudden upside. Growth came through tighter operations, better sourcing and incremental expansion. “You don’t disrupt this kind of business,” says Agarwal, CEO and founder of Baby Forest Ayurveda. “You just run it better.”

For a few years, that’s what he did. There was comfort in it. There was familiarity. There was continuity. But there was also a ceiling.

The ground beneath the fight

The shift didn’t come as a sudden break. It built gradually, through exposure to adjacent categories—products built on the same base inputs but positioned very differently.

Here, oils and extracts didn’t move as commodities. They moved as formulations. They carried identity, narrative, pricing power. Margins expanded sharply—not by a few points, but by multiples.

That’s when it clicked. “My eyes lit up,” says the 35-year-old founder. Imagine the excitement of a person who has been working on margins of 2% and suddenly spots a business that has margins of around 80%.

Around the same time, something else shifted—closer to home. In 2019, he had his first child. What had earlier been abstract—labels, ingredient lists, marketing claims—became personal.

The questions were simple. What oil goes on a newborn’s skin? What exactly is inside it? How much of what is called ‘natural’ actually holds up?

The answers weren’t straightforward. While the labels spoke confidently—natural, gentle, safe—a closer look told a different story. Blends, additives, and percentages punctured that promise. “80% were natural, but the rest was still chemical,” Agarwal claims.

That gap lingered.

What began as a search turned into something more deliberate. He started going deeper—into formulations, sourcing, how products were actually put together. The gap between what was claimed and what was delivered became harder to ignore.

At the factory, he dealt with raw material—oils, inputs, supply chains. At home, he dealt with the end use—what actually touched skin. The idea began to take shape here—not as a plan, but as a shift in perspective. “What if you start from the most sensitive user?” he said. “Where you can’t afford to get it wrong.” What if purity wasn’t something added later but where you began?

Turning that shift into a business was not immediate. Ideas are easy to hold in your head. Translating them into something that works—consistently, commercially, at scale—is harder.

Choosing control over speed

For Agarwal, the early decisions were less about growth and more about control. If the premise was purity—real, verifiable, non-negotiable—too many variables could weaken it. Outsourcing would introduce those variables.

So, he stayed close to sourcing, formulation and how the product actually came together. “I didn’t want to lose control of what was going inside,” he says. It slowed things down. That was fine. Speed wasn’t the objective.

The second decision was positioning.

The Indian baby care market already had presence at both ends—legacy brands with deep distribution, and newer digital-first companies built for visibility.

But a gap existed. It was not obvious, but visible. That realisation shaped the move. “When you see that there is a huge gap and demand, then why not enter the business,” he says. The opening sat in a narrow band—premium enough to justify better inputs and focussed enough to build credibility over time. “Forest Essentials should have taken this opportunity. They didn’t. We did,” says Agarwal.

Forest Essentials did have a presence in baby care—but as a line within a larger portfolio. It sat under the mother brand, without a separate identity.

Agarwal, meanwhile, took a different route. He built the category around the user first—giving it a name, a boundary, and a brand of its own.

That positioning, though, came with trade-offs. Pricing was one of them. At the factory, he understood cost. In the market, he saw something else. Products priced at ₹40 sat next to products at ₹700. Both claimed to be natural. Both claimed to be safe. The difference wasn’t always obvious. “You can’t build this at ₹40,” he said. “Something has to give.”

Agarwal had to choose where to sit. Lower price meant faster adoption, but compromise. Higher price meant slower growth, but tighter control. He chose the latter. That choice carried through everything else. Formulations couldn’t be adjusted downward to meet price points. Ingredients couldn’t be swapped out for cheaper alternatives. The product had to stand on its own before the brand could.

By the time Baby Forest was taking shape, the consumer startup ecosystem had settled into a pattern: raise capital early, spend on acquisition, scale fast.

Agarwal didn’t follow that playbook. There was no venture funding, no aggressive push to expand, no urgency to build top-line numbers for visibility.

His approach was deliberate. He built steadily, letting the product find acceptance and trust build through use rather than advertising. The name came together in that phase. “Forest” carried what he wanted—nature, origin, something closer to source. “Baby” set the boundary. “It keeps you honest,” he says. “You can’t hide behind claims when the user is a newborn,” says Agarwal, who registered the name in 2020.

From traction to tension

Baby Forest began operations in October 2022. The early months reflected that restraint. There were no large launches, no heavy marketing pushes, and no attempt to flood the market. Products moved in small batches, distribution stayed limited, and feedback loops were short—what worked stayed, what didn’t was reworked. In the first six months, the business crossed roughly ₹2.5 crore in revenue.

For a brand not chasing scale, that number carried weight.

The second year brought more clarity, with cautious expansion in distribution and a product range that grew without straying from the same discipline. By the end of that year, revenues were approaching ₹10 crore.

The stronger signal came from behaviour. Customers were returning. In a category where trust is fragile—more so when the user is a newborn—that kind of repeat use is hard to fake.

The brand also began to rethink where it showed up. Online marketplaces were crowded. Discovery there was expensive, often driven by visibility rather than conviction. So, Agarwal moved closer to the moment of decision—hospitals and maternity centres. These were the places where first-time parents were already asking the same questions he had asked a few years earlier. “It’s not about reach,” he said. “It’s about being there when the decision is made.”

The focus shifted towards proximity. By mid-2023, the brand was no longer under the radar. The name had begun to travel, customers recognised it, and conversations picked up.

By FY25, operating revenue had reached ₹19.96 crore, with repeat customers forming a significant share. It claims to have closed FY26 at ₹26.61 crore. The company remains bootstrapped.

Profitability, however, is still taking shape. The business continues to invest in product and distribution, and while it was loss-making through FY24, FY25 and most of FY26—₹1.20 crore, ₹4.07 crore and ₹2.5 crore, respectively—Agarwal says it has begun turning profitable from January this year.

That build-up didn’t stay unnoticed for long. It invited comparison—and eventually, a response.

That response arrived on June 16, 2023, in the form of a legal notice from Forest Essentials. The notice argued that the name “Baby Forest” had come too close, entering a space it claimed as its own.

What followed was not a single confrontation, but a sequence—replies drafted, arguments framed, documents filed. Each step pulled the brand deeper into a process it hadn’t set out to enter but now had to navigate.

Out of the woods, for now

By August 2023, the matter had reached the courts. For Agarwal, the impact was immediate. The business didn’t pause, but it began to feel different. Alongside product and distribution decisions came legal consultations, strategy discussions, and the steady drain on time and attention that litigation brings.

The stakes sharpened. The question now extended beyond building a brand—it touched on whether the brand could continue under the name it had chosen.

In May 2024, the Delhi High Court refused to grant an injunction, allowing Baby Forest to continue using its name while the case moved forward.

The reasoning went to the centre of the dispute. The word forest, the court observed, was descriptive, widely used, and not something that could be claimed in isolation. Trademarks had to be assessed as a whole, and on that basis, the two marks were not found to be deceptively similar at a prima facie level.

The proceedings continued.

In February 2026, the court dismissed the appeal filed by Forest Essentials, upholding the 2024 decision and finding no prima facie deceptive similarity between the marks: Baby Forest and Forest Essentials.

Agarwal is delighted.

“The dismissal of the injunction and the subsequent ruling by the division bench in our favour is reassuring and encouraging,” he says. At Baby Forest, he underlines, the focus continues to remain on creating safe, natural and Ayurveda-inspired products for babies. “We remain focused on our mission to bring the goodness of Ayurveda to modern parenting,” he adds.

For now, Baby Forest keeps its name and its place in the market.

But what comes next is a different test. Growth still needs to hold. Profitability has only just begun to turn. Winter, though, has passed and the forest is changing.

And this one is still a baby—just stepping into its first spring.