A simmering rivalry between two major personal care players—Honasa Consumer (the company behind Mamaearth and The Derma Co) and Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL)—has turned into a full-blown legal faceoff, with both companies dragging each other to court over a controversial sunscreen ad campaign.
The dispute kicked off after Honasa took issue with a recent Lakme ad by HUL titled the “SPF Lie Detector Test.” The campaign claims that several popular sunscreens marketed as SPF 50 actually provide far less protection, some closer to SPF 20. While the ad doesn’t directly name brands, the visuals appear to mimic the packaging of certain products—something Honasa believes targets The Derma Co’s sunscreen unfairly.
Calling the ad misleading and damaging to its reputation, Honasa approached the Delhi High Court, which has since issued notice to HUL and scheduled the next hearing for Thursday.
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HUL, for its part, has fired back by filing its own legal case against Honasa in the Bombay High Court. According to sources, both courts are expected to address the issue on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.
The tension spilled into the public sphere when Honasa co-founder Ghazal Alagh posted on LinkedIn, criticizing what she described as a long-standing lack of healthy competition in the FMCG sector. She suggested that legacy brands had grown complacent, indirectly pointing to HUL’s dominance.
In defense of its campaign, Lakme released a statement on social media claiming that some top-selling online sunscreens, despite claiming to be “in vivo” tested, fail to live up to their SPF 50 label, delivering closer to SPF 20 under clinical conditions.
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“In vivo” refers to testing done on living organisms—often considered the gold standard for assessing product performance on human skin.
What started as a marketing jab has now escalated into a courtroom showdown, highlighting how fierce the battle for shelf space (and skin protection claims) has become in India’s booming skincare market.
