Where it started.

This one's the beginning, written down before we forget how it felt.

For years, the sunscreen we swore by was one you can't simply pick up in India. The kind that gets carried back from abroad, rationed through the summer, restocked by whoever's flying in next — invisible on the skin, no white cast, no grease, good enough to wear every single morning without thinking about it. And every time we went looking for an Indian one that felt the same, it ended the same way: the ones we tried sat grey on the skin, slid off by noon, or were priced like a luxury import anyway.

One evening in November, after another empty tube, we finally said it out loud: why does the good one cost this much, and why does nothing made for the skin and the sun we grew up with feel like it? Neither of us came from beauty. But that's a weak reason to keep paying a premium for a bottle nobody should have to smuggle home in the first place.

So we started sketching. Not a brand yet — a spec. One honest sunscreen: broad-spectrum, invisible finish, lab-tested, priced like something you're meant to wear every day and not save for the beach. We gave it a working name — 78 Labs — and one rule we still hold: prove everything, hype nothing.

That's all this was at the start. Two people annoyed enough to stop complaining and start building. Everything after this — the first samples, the lab, the tube, the cap — we're posting as it happens, right here.

If you've ever waited on a sunscreen someone was carrying back for you, this one's being made for you. Come watch.

— Aashish & Rishitha, 78 Labs