kuva

Years ago, I kept ruining batches of soap and couldn't figure out why. Turns out, the coconut oil I was buying from the local market was adulterated. The lye and oil wouldn't emulsify — a step that normally takes two minutes was taking twenty, and the soap never set.
The test is almost absurdly simple: put a small sample in your fridge. Pure coconut oil solidifies completely — smooth, white, firm all the way through. If it stays partly liquid, looks grainy, or separates into layers, it's not pure.
That experience changed how I source every ingredient for Kùva. Our coconut oil now comes directly from local farmers here in Goa — people I know, processes I can see.
Save this for the next time you're buying coconut oil. Or send it to someone who should see it.

A little love letter to kokum. 💜
Most of you have met it at a lunch table — in solkadhi, in Bindam/kokum squash — long before you met it on your skin. It grows wild across the Ghats, just up from us. We press the butter from its seeds: solid in the jar, melting the moment it touches you, and tough enough to hold its own in Goan humidity.
We could buy cheaper. We don't, because this one's from home.
Want me to break down another ingredient next? Tell me which one.

The question behind every product I've ever made.
ten years ago I wasn't trying to build a brand. I was a daughter who couldn't find anything clean enough for her mum. Kùva grew out of that, slowly, in Goa, by hand. I still make every decision the same way.
What made you start caring about what you put on your skin? I'd love to know.

Bangkok. Day four of "research." 💆🏽‍♀️
I keep telling my accountant this is a business expense.
Tell me what spa town I should "research" next? 👇

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You asked. We waited.
For years, you've been asking us for applicators — and we could have given you one a long time ago if we'd been willing to go the plastic route. We weren't.
So we waited until we found something that felt right. Something sustainable. Something local. Something made by hand.
Meet Mr. Lotlekar, master craftsman from Parra, Goa. He takes the hard outer shell of the coconut — usually discarded as waste — splits it into strips, and shapes each one into a little scoop on his grinding wheel. No two are alike. Every Kùva deodorant now comes with one of these.
This is what slow, considered, truly sustainable design looks like to us. And we think it was worth the wait.
P.S. Mr. Lotlekar also makes a lot of other lovely products. If you'd like to get in touch with him for something custom made, let us know — we're happy to share his contact info.

Uski. Getonia floribunda.

If you've walked the hills of Goa in summer, you've seen it. You probably don't know its name.
For generations it was how Goa fed its coconut trees. Every August, before the feast of the Assumption, families would head into the forest for head-loads of Uski leaves to manure each palm. The soil around an Uski vine — Uskechi mati — is still the best garden soil you can find anywhere.

I think about this when I'm making things in my kitchen. So much of what we now call 'wellness' or 'clean beauty' — it was just life, in places like this. Not a trend. Not a discovery. People knew the names of what grew around them. A vine wasn't a curiosity. It was the reason your coconuts came in heavy that year.

Long before anyone said "organic farming," Uski was already doing the work. Quietly. Every year.
Have you seen these flowers in bloom? Or do you know this vine by another name?

Five smells of Goa that live in my head rent-free.
Wet soil after the first rains. Madhumalti drifting over summer walls. Hot chai when it's grey outside. Salt air that stays in your hair for two days. Mancurad mangoes in May, the kind you only get for a few weeks, forget about all year, and remember the moment someone cuts one open.
I keep thinking about how a place gets into you. Not the postcards. The small repeated things you stop noticing, until you leave, and then you'd give anything for them.
What are yours? Tell me below.

The Rangoon Creeper (Madhumalti) is one of my favourite things about Goa right now 🌸
This vine is everywhere at this time of year — tumbling over walls and fences — and if you've walked past one, you've probably caught that soft, sweet scent without even realising where it came from.
The coolest thing about this flower? It changes colour as it ages — white to pink to deep red. So one vine can look like a whole bouquet.
Madhumalti has been used in Ayurveda for centuries for skin health, digestion, and more. It's one of those plants that's beautiful AND functional — our kind of plant 🌿
Honestly dreaming about bottling this scent into something you can wear. A madhumalti face mist? A floral body spray? Tell me in the comments if you'd be into it 👇
📍 Goa, India