MAM
What next after the WFH honeymoon?
NEW DELHI: The ‘new normal’ might already have started setting in with major conglomerates of the world taking calls like allowing their employees to work from home ‘forever’. Recently, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a company-wide email that while opening the offices will be the company’s call, to come back will be totally an employee’s choice.
Several other tech companies, including the other two giants Facebook and Google, have told their employees to work from home till the end of this year. Closer home, e-learning platform Unacademy announced that 60 per cent of its workforce will be working from home permanently, even after the lockdown.
This gives a clear picture of what the future of workplaces is going to be like, at least for the tech firms where most of the work can be managed over servers and clouds. Reacting to the same, brand-thinker and independent consultant Harish Bijoor noted: “WFH makes sense for every factor: economic, social, family, commute, cost, time, and common sense. Corporate society does not need to artificially divide home and work anymore. It makes great sense!”
Brand-nomics managing director Viren Razdan said: “While Google has announced WFH beyond the lockdown, the truth is tech companies have thrived on the idea of WFH or rather WFA or Work From Anywhere. Amazon and Apple were born in home-garages, giving birth to the cult of ‘ideas behind napkins’, start-up buzz at cafes, the informality bred a new culture of play.”
Sharing his thoughts on how the culture can be embedded in other industries, he added, “This IS perhaps the WFH honeymoon; we are all learning and encouraging, holding each other’s hand firmly through this phase. The real truths would unveil once we bring the practice into regular play. The biggest challenge perhaps would be to disrupt our culture to allow this fluidity and freedom. Our models at work based on firm control, checks and balances in place. The buzzing office is symbolic of efficiency and business as usual. Companies would be pushed to make accountability a key factor, and shed the weight of authority. A lot of companies are moving to fast-forward to agile models of work, which are perhaps more conducive to adapt to these new systems.”
Recently, in a webinar hosted by the Advertising Club of Bangalore, BBH India CEO and managing partner Subhash Kamath and Wunderman Thompson South Asia group CEO and chairman Tarun Rai supported the idea of allowing flexibility to agency workforce to work from home, citing reasons like the fact that it will bring more gender-equality within the teams and liberate the talent from geography.
However, they had also noted that to make this culture a reality, people will have to bring some behavioural changes in themselves and leave control that they like to have on subordinates, and also the firms will have to rework their appraisal policies.
Agreeing to this, Samsika Marketing Consultants MD Jagdeep Kapoor said: “I had learnt this from grandmother and it stands relevant today that when everything closes there should be one thing that remains open, and that is your mind. I think any transition will be possible if people keep an open mind and accept changes.”
He also vouched for the many benefits that working from home will come with. “I think working from home increases productivity, saves time, and allows teams across cities to work together for better deliverables. Personally, I have been working from a home office for more than a decade now and it has been great. I have this policy that I don’t visit client offices and meet them at my place. With remote working, now clients have eased out even more and we have those meetings over video calls now.”
Brands
Dabur buys minority stake in Ras Beauty for Rs 60 crore
Dabur Ventures deal backs fast-growing luxury skincare brand
MUMBAI: Dabur India Limited has dipped into the world of luxury skincare, signing a definitive agreement to acquire a minority stake in Ras Beauty Private Limited for Rs 60 crore. The investment marks the first bet from Dabur Ventures, the FMCG major’s Rs 500 crore platform set up in October 2025 to back high-potential, new-age direct-to-consumer brands.
Founded in Raipur by Shubhika Jain, her sister Suramya Jain and their mother Sangeeta Jain, Ras Beauty has grown from a family-led passion project into a fast-scaling “Farm-to-Face” skincare label. Its range of face elixirs, serums and moisturisers blends essential oils with nature-derived actives, striking a balance between botanical purity and laboratory precision.
The numbers tell their own story. Ras has clocked a three-year Cagr of around 75 per cent and an annual run rate of approximately Rs 100 crore, all while maintaining strong gross margins. That growth has been fuelled by a digital-first approach, in-house R&D and manufacturing, and a sharp focus on clean, sustainable sourcing.
Dabur India executive director and group head corporate strategy Abhinav Dhall, said the company was drawn to Ras’s distinct positioning at the intersection of nature, science and luxury. He added that the premium beauty segment is poised for robust expansion over the coming decade, and that Ras is well placed to capture that opportunity.
For Ras, the partnership is as much about scale as it is about shared philosophy. Co-founder and CEO Shubhika Jain said Dabur’s 141-year legacy of building trusted, purpose-led brands makes it a natural ally. The capital infusion, she noted, will help accelerate the brand’s omnichannel footprint, deepen research capabilities and invest in team and brand building, with an eye on establishing Ras as a leading Indian luxury skincare name both domestically and overseas.
With this move, Dabur is not just investing in a skincare label. It is placing an early wager on India’s growing appetite for premium, conscious beauty, and signalling that heritage FMCG players are ready to play in the new-age D2C arena.
