Aishvarya Murali is the co-founder of Tuco Kids, the Bengaluru-based personal care brand for children aged 3 to 13 , covering hair care, body wash, soaps, face creams, sunscreens, mosquito repellents, and gift kits, all packaged in reclaimed plastic.
Tuco has grown approximately 10x in a single year, served over 200,000 parents, and raised a $4 million Series A led by RTP Global. The brand sells through its own D2C platform alongside Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, Myntra, FirstCry, Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart.
Aishvarya built the brand around a gap most parents feel but few brands had named: children who have outgrown baby products but whose skin is not ready for adult formulations. That gap became a category , and Tuco is now building the market that goes inside it.
Background & Journey
Aishvarya brings over two decades of brand and marketing experience to a category that most large FMCG companies had ignored. She has worked at Unilever, Ola, ZestMoney, and Furlenco, building consumer brands from the inside before turning that expertise toward children's personal care.
She co-founded Tuco with Chanakya Gupta, formerly of Curefit and Flipkart, who leads growth and operations. The combination of deep FMCG experience on the brand side and a high-growth D2C operator on the execution side is what makes Tuco's early scale impressive.
On Dilse Omni Talks
Aishvarya Murali recently appeared on Dilse Omni Talks with host Saurabh Agrawal, where the conversation explored “Why children's personal care is one of the biggest untapped opportunities in Indian D2C”, and what it really takes to create a new category.
3 Key Takeaways from the Episode
● Category creation is harder than brand building. Before Tuco could sell a product, it had to convince parents that a gap existed , that baby products are too gentle and adult products are too harsh for a child aged 5 or 10. Building that awareness is the actual first product Tuco had to launch.
● Indian supermarkets never had a kids' personal care aisle. That absence is not an accident , it is the entire business opportunity. It shapes everything from how Tuco designs its packaging to how it approaches distribution, because there is no shelf to slide into; the shelf has to be created.
● The buyer and the user are two completely different people. Tuco's products must earn the trust of parents on safety and quality while simultaneously appealing to children on design, scent, and experience. That is a design constraint most consumer brands never have to solve , and getting it right is what drives repeat purchase.
