Ten labs later.

Last update ended on a promise: from here, our opinion of the sunscreen counts for nothing. What counts is proof — a lab running the same tests the big, established brands run, with our names nowhere near the result. Today that testing officially starts.

We thought this would be the easy part. Our manufacturer already works with labs; we figured we'd take a reference, sign, and move on. Then we started reading — and the more we read, the less comfortable "just go with the reference" felt.

Here's why. Last year, independent testing in India sent ten of the country's best-selling sunscreens to certified labs. More than half came back delivering less than half the SPF printed on the bottle. Big names. Every price point. Quietly under-protecting the people who trusted them. That's the market we're walking into — and if we're going to ask you to put our sunscreen on your face every morning, and on your kids', the number on our tube has to be real. Not a formulator's estimate. Not a quick reading off a machine. Measured on human skin.

So we did the slow thing. We talked to more than ten labs. We asked each one exactly what they'd test, to which standard, and — the part that mattered — what they'd quietly leave out. That's where it got interesting. The cheaper, faster quotes almost always dropped the one test that actually counts: the in-vivo test, where the sunscreen goes on real volunteers and the SPF is measured on their skin under controlled UV. It's the test the Indian standard requires before anyone can legally claim SPF 50+. It's also the slowest and most expensive — which is exactly why the shortcuts skip it. We weren't going to be the brand that skips it.

It took months to settle on the lab. The one we chose wasn't the cheapest, and we turned down quotes that were. But their reports already sit behind sunscreens you'd recognise — some probably in your home right now — and when we pushed, they were straight with us about what they could and couldn't certify. After ten conversations, that honesty counted for as much as the credentials.

Now the honest part, because this journal doesn't work without it: we don't have results yet. This isn't "our sunscreen passed." It's "the testing has started, and here's the bar we set for it." The first stage is a lab screen; only if the formula clears it does it move to the human trial that decides the label. And here's a promise we're putting in writing: we will only ever print the SPF number the certificate confirms. If it comes back short, we go back to the formula. We don't round up, and we don't launch on a hope.

Results take time, and we'd rather wait for them than hand you a number we can't stand behind. When the certificate is in our hands, you'll see the real one here first.

Until then, the waitlist is open — and your first bottle is ₹499 for the people who join before we open.

— Aashish & Rishitha, 78 Labs