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The Interview: Suveen Sahib, founder of industry-disrupting haircare brand K18

Chloe Burney
18 December 2024

K18 has undeniably taken the world of haircare by storm, making damaged locks a thing of the past. The revolutionary brand, founded by Suveen Sahib and Britta Cox in San Francisco in 2020, is taking over as one of the leading haircare brands to restore hair and prevent damage – knocking aside one of the leading haircare brands (without naming names).

The haircare brand launched with its breakthrough product, the Leave-in Molecular Repair Hair Mask (£30), just four years ago. Using the power of nature and human biology (otherwise known as biotech), rather than cosmetics chemistry, the haircare brand unlocks new solutions to the biggest challenges when it comes to healthy hair.

In this interview with TheIndustry.beauty, co-founder Suveen Sahib delves into the nitty-gritty science behind the formulas based in biology over cosmetics chemistry and how this changed the haircare game. He also divulges details on why he decided to sell the brand to Unilever and his plans to extend the range and reach of K18.

Creating industry-disrupting K18

Suveen Sahib, a tech veteran, wasn't expecting to create a haircare brand. He said that he quite literally stumbled into the industry after an illustrious career working in the consumer and tech industries.

It all began when his life partner founded Aquis, a hair-drying towel brand. He was curious as to why women would use a specific type of towel for drying their hair. After learning the intricacies involved in preventing damage, Sahib couldn’t believe the amount of time, effort and products that go into taking care of hair to prevent it from heat and bleach damage.

Still curious, he began gathering books on biophysics and biochemistry so he could understand the interactions between water and chemically damaged hair from an academic perspective.

Sahib, who couldn't hide his passion for scientific and technological discovery, said: "This hair towel fascinated me and I began looking into biophysics and biochemistry. I realised hair strands are all fixed structures. They’re amino acid chains, polypeptide chains, that are constantly interacting with the environment outside, with their humidity, with alkalinity, with bleach environments. And as these get disrupted, hair becomes lifeless and loses its strength."

The co-founder acknowledged cosmetics chemistry lacked an understanding of all-important biology. Instead, he went for a technological approach that studied biology over chemistry. He started mapping the whole Keteratine genome over several years to identify the sequences that would restore hair after damage.

"K18 happened to be one of the sequences that we optimised to repair hair, especially from a severely damaged state, and make it almost kind of a comeback to near virgin strength and last state", he said.

"We didn’t do that in a chemist's lab, we did that through mathematical modelling and molecular modelling of solvents to figure out what is the most efficient way to deposit the peptide into the hair. All of this was about 10 years."

Nature is the best designer, and K18 found that by understanding the biology of hair, you can achieve true hair health and hair expression with less product, less time, and less frustration.

What resulted is K18, the patented molecular repair hair mask that repairs years of damage in just four minutes. K18 is a leave-in hair mask that claims to repair damaged hair from the inside out. K18 was not created in a formulation lab, it was designed on a computer. This took about seven to eight years, and after that, the co-founders put it into a primary formulation.

Getting the word out

In the same way it rejected conventional cosmetics chemistry, K18 also rejected conventional marketing. Instead of rolling out products to influencers and content creators, the brand targeted the professional hair community. As K18 is all about reversing damage, it made sense to target stylists who did the most extreme colour work to try out the product.

Sahib said: "Stylists were blown away by the results. Their conversations mushroomed across the world, and that started building the cadence for the brand.

"The brand is also very community-centric, so we reached out to influencers and had them come and try the product in the salon. That's how they started falling in love with it, and that, in turn, started building up the whole community of K18 lovers."

In the beauty industry, there has always been a quest for products that can do exactly what they say they do without complicating haircare routines. That’s exactly what K18’s mask does. Simply by word of mouth, K18 quickly became adored for its effectiveness and simplicity. It’s so simple, in just four minutes you can transform the hair without the need to use conditioner. What’s not to love?

In Sahib’s opinion, "K18 has revolutionised the industry because it has liberated hair expression." In other words, bleach no longer needs to be a scary thing.

He added: "We were also one of the early adopters of TikTok, which played a huge role in our evolution. We started driving our first campaign on TikTok, which was with the launch at Sephora, and it generated about 10 billion views.

"A year later, we started growing our stylist community with the launch of a TikTok just for stylists. We thought we'd probably get about a couple of 100 million views. It got 12 billion views. These two campaigns essentially created a pathway for the global evolution of the brand."

@k18hair Reverse hair damage in just 4 mins! ⏰ @Mahnoormtl knows the 🔑 to healthy hair is the #K18 leave-in hair mask! 🧬Reverses damage from bleach, color, chemical services + heat 🧬 Gives immediate and long-lasting results 🧬 Works at the molecular level, which means it works on ALL hair types Find it at @sephora #k18hair #k18results #sephora ♬ original sound - K18 Hair

Unilever acquisition

In December 2023, Unilever acquired K18 for an undisclosed sum. To Sahib, this deal was a no-brainer. He felt that, as a global beauty corporation, Unilever was the next logical step to help scale K18 globally.

Unilever launched a ‘prestige’ division in 2014, which acquired many coveted beauty brands including Dermalogica, Paula's Choice, Tatcha, and more. They created a playbook on how to bring out the best of these brands and then helped them scale on a global basis. K18, which was ready to reap the rewards of joining Unilever's portfolio of brands, wasn’t the first on this list and it won't be the last.

Part of the agreement with the company is that Sahib would stay on board. Nothing has changed, in fact, everything has remained the same as it was before the company was acquired.

When asked why he decided to sell the brand to the beauty conglomerate, the co-founder said: "To build a global brand, you need expertise, market insights, consumer insights, supply chain and regulatory experience. Unilever has been working in markets globally for decades. They have the template for building billion-dollar brands. As entrepreneurs, there’s only so far we could go. Unilever can accelerate growth and actually accomplish the vision that we have for K18."

Product and retail expansion

K18 is only in its fourth year of evolution and it has already found success both on its home turf (US) and here in the UK. When asked if the brand was looking to expand its third-party partnerships, Sahib explained that they’re focusing on going deeper into the communities it is already a part of. The brand is already available at Cult Beauty, Sephora, Space NK and Superdrug.

Moving forward, K18 is doubling down on its UK presence. "We want to be part of the British culture", said Sahib. For the next few years, it's not about expansion for K18, it's about doubling down to grow its stylist and consumer communities.

As for expanding its product offering, K18 recently brought its Airwash dry shampoo to the UK. Airwash (£48) is a non-aerosol, scalp-friendly dry shampoo formula that is powered by the brand’s strand-saving biotech. The dry shampoo doesn’t mask odours; it’s scientifically proven to recognise, suspend and eliminate them.

As for the science, all you need to know is that it uses the most powerful odour-eliminating technology in nature. Translucent microbeads (made from minerals—not plastics) sponge up excess oil without leaving a white cast or buildup. This latest launch adds to its product offering of detox and repair shampoos and conditioners, a hair oil, and of course, its iconic Leave-in Molecular Repair Hair Mask.


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