Dr Tanya Unni launches skincare venture following four years of R&D

Amtan Medical co-founder Dr Tanya Unni has long been one of the Gold Coast’s leading medical professionals, but her latest venture has seen the entrepreneur wade into uncharted waters. 

Her latest skincare venture, eponymously named Dr Tanya, has emerged from four years of research and development with a fresh look and a new product line that smashed the founder’s expectations, selling out within half an hour of its launch.

While many of her contemporaries in both the cosmetics and medical industries struggled in recent times with COVID restrictions and supply chain issues, Unni used that time to execute a rebrand and bring her latest holy basil-based product line to market.

“I first launched Dr Tanya in 2018 but during COVID I stopped pushing the sales and put my energy into research and development instead,” explains Unni. 

“Now three years later, the outcome has been wonderful. We had one hour for our launch event through the Television Shopping Network, and we had completely sold out within 30 minutes.”

Unni was motivated to create Dr Tanya as an answer to the common skincare questions she would often be asked by her clients at Amtan Medical; ‘What’s the best skincare routine?’, ‘Why is my skin so dull’ and ‘Why are these products not working?’.

On a personal note, Unni was also inspired by her most important patient.

“My little boy suffered with eczema, and I wanted to find solutions for him and for my other patients that I would be comfortable with recommending, and products I could completely trust,” she says. 

“I was asking myself, how do I give them the right solution? Particularly when there’s so many options out there that are mass produced and I’m not sure about.”

The answer to her problem came from a fusion between modern and ancient medical science. 

Dr Tanya’s signature recipe combines Unni’s years of modern clinical experience with her own Indian heritage and ayurveda, a holistic medical practice that pre-dates Chinese medicine and has been around for more than 5,000 years.

“In modern medicine, we focus on diagnosis and management – you find the problem and you treat it – but nowadays there’s an increasing trend towards looking at more preventative and holistic measures,” she says.

“As a mother, you explore all possibilities. So, with my experience as a doctor and as an advocate for a holistic approach I started researching the ancient art of ayurveda.”

To those who practice it, ayurveda is a way of life. It translates directly to ‘life science’ and is a ritual that involves both body and mind. 

Holy basil has been used for its medicinal properties in ayurveda for thousands of years and is now Dr Tanya’s key ingredient.

“It just made sense to bring that ritual of wellbeing into skincare,” she says.

“The holy basil plant is called tulsi which means ‘Goddess’, and in my culture we worship the Goddess on a daily basis.

“From the root to the flowers, it has antimicrobial, antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties and it just has a very special place in our culture.”

Now that the worst of COVID is over, Dr Tanya’s sales are skyrocketing through a variety of clicks and bricks avenues.

Unni opened the Dr Tanya Skin Clinic at Hope Island in addition to an e-commerce site which the entrepreneur says have both yielded impressive sales and growth margins. 

Dr Tanya has also reaped the rewards from mainstay appearances on the Television Shopping Network (TVSN).

Fans of social media might question this marketing choice, but Unni says it has allowed a particularly neglected target market to access Dr Tanya – and the payoff has been substantial.

“We launched our skincare exfoliation device and hairbrush through the TVSN, and these products are ones that definitely require product education,” says Unni. 

“The younger generations who are all tech savvy can access this information via social media, but when you’re talking about people who are 60 and over, the TVSN has been a way to share knowledge and communicate with potential buyers in an accessible way.

“I want Dr Tanya to be accessible to everyone.”