About Radico
A Company Built by
Refusing the Shortcut.
Radico makes hair color out of certified organic plants and nothing else. That sentence is short, but it took about fifteen years and a long series of refusals to make it true — including one refusal that still costs us something today.
This page is the honest version of how we got here, including the parts that weren't clever.
How It Started
Sixteen Rejections, Then a Seventeenth Sample
Sanjeev Bhatt left his job in 1992 and started an export business out of a corner of his home. Henna, at first — the plain kind, for skin. Then an inquiry arrived from Japan that changed the direction of the company.
One color wasn't enough
The Japanese buyer wanted henna good enough to color hair, for a market already looking for alternatives to chemical dye. The problem was chemistry: plain henna produces one color, an orange-brown, and nothing else.
So Sanjeev started sending formulations. The first sixteen were rejected, over eighteen months. The seventeenth was accepted. The order that followed was worth US$270 — and he had to borrow the money to fulfil it.
Learning what "acceptable" means
Japanese retail buyers reject a pouch for a small dent or a lifted corner of a label. The product inside is fine; that isn't the point. Early shipments came back over exactly this.
Radico replaced them — entire shipments, not the damaged units. It was expensive, and it taught the company a standard it had no other way to learn. That buyer is still a customer today.
Everyone he asked said it was impossible
Sanjeev decided to pursue hair color made entirely from plants. Every scientist, herbal expert and chemist he approached declined, on the grounds that it could not be done.
He built a small lab in his house and started on his own. There was little published research on the herbs to work from, so most of it was trial and error. Four years later he had six colors. The Japanese called the brown one Super Natural Brown, and the product took the name SUNAB from it.
Sanjeev Bhatt · Founder
People helped him at almost every point in this story — and the reason they gave was usually the same one.
A buyer who waited a year to be repaid. A bank manager. A Japanese customer who paid in full, in advance, for an order Sanjeev had written to say he couldn't afford to make. None of that was strategy. It followed from how he dealt with people when things went wrong.
The refusal that still costs us
0.01% Iron Would Have Made This Twice as Fast
Traditional Japanese dyeing has long used iron to fix and develop plant color. A partner made the obvious suggestion: add a trace of it — one part in ten thousand — and the color would develop in a fraction of the time. Iron is one of the most abundant elements on earth. At that concentration, nobody would have noticed.
Sanjeev said no. Not because the amount was dangerous, but because 100% organic either means every ingredient or it means nothing. One added mineral would have made the phrase untrue, and he wasn't willing to print a sentence he'd have to qualify.
This is why Radico asks for one to two hours on your hair, where a conventional color is finished in about thirty minutes. That waiting time is the shape of a decision somebody made twenty years ago — and it's the reason the ingredient list is as short as it is.
Where That Led
Colour Me Organic
Continuing from the six SUNAB shades, Radico worked toward a version that could be certified rather than simply described. The result was a new brand, Colour Me Organic, and it arrived in 2012 — the first single-step hair color to be certified organic by ECOCERT, meaning one application rather than the two-part henna-then-indigo routine.
Ten shades at launch. Twenty-four today, built from twelve certified organic plants in different proportions. The formula has not needed a chemical since.
Why this site reads the way it does
You may notice that our product pages tell you what Radico can't do — that it won't lighten hair, that it takes longer, that we can't prove our herbs repair anything. That isn't modesty as a marketing device.
It's the same instinct as the phone call to a buyer in Denmark about a mismatched necklace, and the same one as turning down the iron. A claim you have to qualify later is worth less than a smaller claim that holds. We'd rather you be able to check everything we say — so the full ingredient list and what our certification actually covers are both a click away.
Outside Opinion
Independently Reviewed
Radico has entered a fair number of awards over thirty years, and plenty of them are the kind any company can enter. These are the three worth your time, because in each case someone outside the company looked at the actual product.
ÖKO-TEST, Germany
2016ÖKO-TEST is a German consumer testing magazine that buys products off the shelf and tests them in a laboratory. It takes no advertising from the brands it reviews, which is why a rating from it means something a submitted award doesn't.
Brown and Auburn Red were both rated Very Good. This was a 2016 assessment — we mention the year because a rating from a decade ago shouldn't be read as a review of what's on our shelf today, even though the formula hasn't changed.
NEXTY Award
USA · 2016Best Natural Beauty Product, judged at Natural Products Expo West by New Hope Network — the trade event the US natural products industry runs on.
Eco-Excellence Awards
USA · 2017Hair Care category, judged by a panel assembled by the National Center for Women, recognising products made to a lower environmental burden.
Radico's full award history — including recognitions received in India and Europe that won't mean much to a reader in the US — is listed on the Radico Inc. site. Certification is a separate matter from awards, and a more useful one: what our certifications actually check.
Who You're Dealing With
The Radico USA Team
Radico USA is a small team working out of Torrance, California. Small enough that an email about a shade that didn't turn out right is read by someone whose name is on this page — not routed to a queue.
Sanjeev Bhatt
Founder and CEO
Nicki Uchino
Office Manager
Nela Nikoletic
Customer ServiceColour Me Organic specialist
Tony Vandenworm
VP of Marketing and Sales
Simon Vandenworm
Customer Service Specialist
Yuki Katakami
Radico USA Hair Research InstituteProfessional Engineer, Japan
Reaching us
Plant-based color depends on your starting hair, so results vary more than they do with a chemical dye. If a shade doesn't come out the way you expected, tell us what happened — that's the fastest route to the right shade, and it's how we learn where our guidance is wrong.
Company Information
Where to Find Us
United States
Radico USA, Inc.
Office and distribution warehouse in Torrance, California. Incorporated in the State of California on September 25, 2002. Orders placed on this site ship from here.
Torrance, CA 90501
World Headquarters
Radico, Inc.
Founded in India in 1992 by Sanjeev Bhatt. Corporate office and manufacturing in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, where the herbs are blended and the color is made.
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201305, India
Shipping, returns and subscription terms are set out in our shipping, refund and subscription policies. If you're outside the United States, start here.