About the firm
Specialist advisers on import licensing, manufacturing licensing, legal metrology, and labelling compliance under Indian cosmetics law — for foreign manufacturers, international brand owners, Indian importers, and domestic manufacturers.
Our practice
Cosmetics Consultants India is a New Delhi-based regulatory consultancy working exclusively in Indian cosmetics compliance. We were established in 2011 — the year cosmetics import registration became mandatory in India for the first time — and have spent the years since building a practice that covers every stage of that process: import licensing, manufacturing licensing, labelling compliance, and Legal Metrology.
Our clients include foreign manufacturers entering the Indian market, international brand owners, Indian importers, and domestic manufacturers. The regulatory path is different for each of them. We know what each path requires, where documentation typically breaks down, and how to present an application so that CDSCO processes it without unnecessary queries.
A registration that spends three rounds in the query cycle is months of lost revenue. We treat that as the cost it actually is.
In fifteen years and over 500 brands served, the work has not changed: reduce the query cycle, eliminate the avoidable delays, and get products to market faster. That preparation — before a single document is filed — is what keeps our approval rate above 90% and our clients’ timelines shorter than they would be otherwise.
What we do differently
Whether filed by the company directly or by another consultant, the same two issues surface again and again. We resolve both before a document reaches the SUGAM portal.
Failure mode · 01
Manufacturers include ingredients not permitted under Indian regulations — or use permitted ingredients above the acceptable concentration limit. By the time this surfaces at CDSCO, the product almost always has to be pulled from the application entirely.
Failure mode · 02
Label claims that imply therapeutic effect push a cosmetic into drug classification territory under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. CDSCO applies Rule 36 strictly — and treats it as a classification problem, not a labelling error.
We do not file first and fix later. Every application goes through a full dossier review before a single document reaches the SUGAM portal.
Pre-filing review
Our approach
Every detail is logged, every document cross-checked. Some attestations are expensive to redo — so we eliminate the need to redo them by getting the dossier right the first time.
Every engagement starts the same way: we collect entity documents from the Indian importer or agent — Certificate of Incorporation, GST registration, Import Export Code — and verify that every detail is consistent across all of them.
Once the dossier is complete and verified, we file through the CDSCO SUGAM portal. We monitor applications continuously and flag any development before the client has to ask.
On grant of approval, clients receive their COS-2 or relevant licence immediately in soft copy. We provide a compliance summary covering renewal timelines and any post-approval obligations.
Taking over a rejected or queried application
If the issues are resolvable — a misrepresented ingredient that can be explained, a label claim that can be corrected — we take the case. If they are not, we say so at the first conversation.
We do not take on applications we cannot fix.Start with a conversation
In that first conversation we cover everything: the applicable registration pathway, document requirements, timelines, and costs. No follow-up calls needed to get basic answers.
Where there is genuine ambiguity — an ingredient that requires classification review, a claim that sits close to the Rule 36 threshold — we say so directly. That honesty at the start is what makes the rest of the process predictable.
