How to Label Handmade Cosmetics in India: The Rules for Home Brands

The first customer who returned a product to me did not complain about the soap. She wanted to know what was in it. The label said "Rose Soap, ₹120" in my handwriting, I could not answer from the pack, and I had no batch number to look up in my notebook because I was not keeping one.

I formulate soap, shampoo, face packs and bath salts, and I have got labelling wrong in most of the ways available. Paper labels that ran in a bathroom. Gift sets with no MRP. Batch numbers that lived in my head. None of it was dishonest. All of it was against the rules, and any of it could have cost me the one thing a home brand runs on, which is the customer's trust that I know what I am doing.

This article is the label I wish someone had handed me. It is written for a maker with a phone, a kitchen and a printer at the local cyber cafe. Nothing in it is legal advice, and the rules move; the portals are linked so you can check the current text yourself.

The two lawsCosmetic labelling rules India applies to home brands too

The first law is about packaging. The Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules apply to anything pre-packed and sold to a consumer, a 100 g soap as much as a 5 kg bag of atta. They set the declarations that must appear on the pack, where, and how large. The Department of Consumer Affairs runs them; the current rules are on the Department of Consumer Affairs portal.

The second law is about the product. The Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, and the Cosmetics Rules made under it, treat as a cosmetic anything meant to be applied to the body for cleansing, beautifying or altering appearance. Soap, cream, shampoo, face pack, bath salt, wax powder: all cosmetics. The rules say who may manufacture them, under what licence, and what the label must carry on top of the metrology declarations. The regulator is the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, at cdsco.gov.in, with licensing done by each state's drugs control authority.

Neither law has a handmade or small-business exemption for cosmetics. The pack-size exemptions that exist are about tiny packs, not tiny businesses.

The checklistThe nine things every pack must carry

Two more lines go on mine, and I would treat both as required. A best-before or use-before date, because the newer cosmetics rules moved in that direction, a buyer expects it, and it protects you when a two-year-old bar comes back rancid. And a short direction for use, because a face pack that is used wrong becomes a complaint.

If you sell through a marketplace, the same declarations have to appear on the listing page, not only on the pack. Marketplaces check for it and reject listings without an MRP or a manufacturer address.

The licenceThe honest complication for a home kitchen

Here is the part most articles skip. The Cosmetics Rules require that a cosmetic manufactured for sale in India is made under a licence issued by the state licensing authority, the drugs controller of your state. The licence is tied to premises, and the premises have to meet conditions on space, surfaces, water, storage and testing that a domestic kitchen does not meet. The label must carry that licence number.

So a home maker who does everything else on this page right still has a licence-number line she cannot fill. I am not going to tell you that every home maker in India is licensed on day one. They are not. What I can tell you is what the rule is, and the three ways the people I teach handle it.

• Stay small and know it. Sell a few dozen units a month to people who know you, label everything else correctly, and treat it as the practice year it is. Understand that this is not compliance; it is a decision about risk that you are making with open eyes.
• Make under someone else's licence. A licensed unit can manufacture your formula on contract. The label then reads "Manufactured by (licensed unit, licence number), Marketed by (your brand)". This is how many small brands on a marketplace actually operate, and it is the route I would take the moment a parlour round or an online shop starts to work.
• Get your own. A small licensed unit outside the house. Real money and real paperwork, and the right answer only once the business has proved it can pay for it.

Two more lines, because they come up. If the product is sold as Ayurvedic, that is a separate licensing route under AYUSH, not the cosmetics route. And if the product is a food, a sharbat or a masala, it is FSSAI that applies and none of this; Rahul has written that side up.

A label is not decoration. It is the only part of your product the customer can read before she trusts you, and the only part a regulator ever looks at. — what the returned rose soap taught me

The label itselfHow to lay out a label for a 100 g soap

1. Decide the front and the backThe front, which the rules call the principal display panel, carries the name, the net quantity and the brand. The back carries everything else. On a box, that is two faces; on a wrap-around band, that is two ends of the same strip.
2. Write the back panel first, in plain textIngredients, MRP, address, batch, date, contact, licence line, best-before, direction for use. Get the words right before anyone makes them pretty.
3. Set the sizes from the rule, not from the designNet quantity and MRP at or above the minimum height for your pack. Everything else legible without a torch.
4. Leave a blank space for batch and datePrint the label without them and add them per batch with a rubber stamp or a small label printer. A printed batch number on five hundred labels is a lie by the second batch.
5. Print ten, stick them, wet themPaper labels on a shampoo bottle run in the first shower. A ₹3 vinyl label survives. Test before you order five hundred.
6. Photograph the finished pack and check every line against the tableDo it once per product, and again every time you change a supplier, a jar or a size.

Ingredients and datesIngredient lists, batch numbers and best-before

The ingredient list

Descending order by quantity, the largest first. Use the common name or the INCI name, and be consistent across the label, the website and the marketplace listing. Fragrance is an ingredient and a known allergen; say it. If you use a ready soap base or a bought fragrance oil, from the store or a wholesaler, ask the supplier for its ingredient declaration and copy it in; a melt-and-pour base is several ingredients, not one. The rules exempt only the very smallest packs from a full list, and I would ignore that exemption: a customer with sensitive skin does not buy a product without an ingredient list, and neither would you.

The batch number

A code that takes you back to one page in your notebook. Mine is a product letter, the date and a batch letter: S240826-A is the first soap batch made on 24 August 2026. On that page: every ingredient, its supplier and lot, the quantities, the date and who made it. If a customer reacts, that number is how you find every other unit from the same pot, and it is the first thing anyone official will ask for.

The best-before

Not a guess. Anhydrous products, an oil, a dry face pack, a bath salt, keep twelve to twenty-four months. Anything with water in it, a shampoo, a cream, keeps six to twelve months with a proper preservative and weeks without one. How long each product keeps is its own article, and the date on the label comes from testing, not hope.

ClaimsWhat you can and cannot say on a cosmetic label

A cosmetic cleanses, moisturises, softens, brightens, scents, exfoliates. The moment the label says it treats, cures, heals or prevents a condition, acne, pigmentation, dandruff, eczema, the product is making a drug claim, and drug rules are a different and much heavier world. Keep the verbs cosmetic.

Be careful with "natural", "organic" and "chemical-free" too. Salt is a chemical. "Organic" is a certification, not an adjective. Say what is in it and let the ingredient list do the persuading.

PrintingPrinting and sticking labels: costs and what fails

For a first run of a hundred, digital print at the local print shop: paper stickers at ₹1.50–₹4 each, vinyl or laminated at ₹3–₹6. A 100-piece run of a two-panel soap box, printed on kraft, is ₹8–₹15 a box. Above five hundred pieces the per-unit price roughly halves and it starts being worth designing properly.

What fails: paper in a bathroom, glossy stock that will not take a stamp, a label wider than the jar's flat face, and white ink on kraft that disappears. Meenu has written the packaging side up, and the two articles are meant to be read together.

Avoid theseCosmetic labelling rules India: the five mistakes I made first

A price but no MRP

"₹120" is not an MRP. "MRP ₹120 (incl. of all taxes)" is. A gift set needs its own.

No address

Your Instagram handle is not an address. Name, house or plot, sector, city, PIN.

The batch in my head

The notebook is the business. Start it before the first sale, not after the first complaint.

"Handmade" as a licence

It is a lovely word and it exempts you from nothing. Know which of the three routes you are on, and say so on the label.

The claim on the front

"Anti-pimple" sold soap in the first month and would have been the first thing a regulator read.

If soap is where you are starting, the packaging, pricing and selling module of the SoapShala course shows the packing and presentation of a finished bar, and the soap business guide is the article before this one. Print ten labels first. Then, when they survive a shower, print five hundred.

Still unsureQuestions we get asked

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