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Handcrafted Ayurvedic beauty — rooted in the classical formulary.

The name & what it means

Maithra (മൈത്രി, मैत्री) is the Sanskrit word for friendship — specifically, the deep, unobtrusive friendliness of one being toward another. It is also the first of the four brahma-viharas in classical Indian thought. We chose it deliberately. A skincare product is something you touch your skin with, daily, for years. We wanted that to be an act of friendship, not transaction.

Where we come from

Maithra is the sister concern of AyurDarshan Hospital — an Ayurvedic hospital and Panchakarma centre at Ayancheri Road, Thiruvallur, Kerala. The hospital came first, in the long Kerala tradition of family Ayurvedic practice. The product line grew out of it.

Here is how, exactly. Year after year, patients who had finished their residential treatment at AyurDarshan would ask for the formulations to take home — *the oil that did this, the lepa that did that*. We made them, in small batches, in the hospital pharmacy. Slowly, that became a catalogue. The catalogue became Maithra.

What we make & what we don't

We make 184 products across face, hair, body, lip, eye, oral, foot, breast, and baby care, plus 35 single-drug raw powders. They divide cleanly into two kinds:

  • Finished formulations — Bhringaraja Hair Oil, Kumkumadi Face Oil, Eladi Body Mist, Nalpamaradi Lepa — ready to use, made small-batch with classical preparation methods.
  • Single-drug raw powders — Amalaki, Manjishtha, Bhringaraja, Neem, Hibiscus, Henna, Sandalwood — pure, unblended single-herb powders. For those who want to follow the classical recipe themselves at home.

We do not synthesise actives, we do not "inspire ourselves with" Ayurveda, we do not market Sanskrit-named products that bear no relation to anything Sushruta wrote. Every Maithra formulation traces back to a recipe on this site — and you can click through to read the classical source it descends from.

How we make it

Sneha-paka (medicated oil cooking) at Maithra follows the classical four-day protocol — paste (kalka) is prepared fresh from the named herbs, combined with sesame oil and the appropriate drava (liquid medium — usually milk or kashayam), then cooked at a controlled temperature through the three classical end-points: mridu, madhyama, khara. Each formulation reaches the paka prescribed by its classical source. Modern oil refining is a process of stripping; classical sneha-paka is a process of *carrying* — fat-soluble actives migrate from the herb paste into the oil base.

Single-drug raw powders are simply that: the herb, harvested, dried, ground. No fillers, no anti-caking agents, no fragrance. The same powder you would get from a classical vaidya's dispensary.

The lineage we follow

The Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita, Ashtanga Hridaya, Sahasrayoga, and Sahasrayoga's Kerala commentaries form our core formulary. For the cosmetic and beauty preparations specifically, our locus is the Uttarasthana of the Ashtanga Hridaya, the Kshudra-roga chikitsa of Sushruta, and the Kerala texts on Tailapaka.

You can read every classical recipe we descend from on this site, with its verse citation, the modern conversion of its units, and the indications it was originally prescribed for. We believe that kind of transparency is the only honest way to sell something called "Ayurvedic".

Where to find us

Want to start? Browse by concern, by classical recipe, or directly in the shop.