Ask Shanti. But Why is Your Hair Oil Giving Life Advice?

A hair-oil brand would like a word about your future.

Education, perhaps. Starting a business. The sort of decision for which stronger roots are a useful metaphor and a rather incomplete qualification.

With ‘Shanti Se Poocho’, Nihar Shanti Amla is taking the intimacy of a familiar consumer brand into an altogether more demanding relationship. Marico’s new AI companion, announced on October 8, is available through WhatsApp and is designed to offer women guidance across education, entrepreneurship and haircare. The brand describes Shanti as a reassuring, non-judgmental presence.

The name does some elegant work. Shanti is already on the bottle; now she sounds like someone whose number you might save. ‘Poocho’ supplies the invitation. You can almost hear the marketing department’s relief: a brand purpose that can finally answer back.

But once it does, the relationship changes. A film can declare that a brand believes in women’s choices. A conversational service has to respond when a woman actually presents it with one.

Nihar is asking whether the confidence earned through an ordinary purchase can travel into an extraordinary amount of personal territory.

THE BOTTLE HAS A BACKSTORY

It would be easy to dismiss this as a hair-oil brand discovering artificial intelligence and immediately applying for a promotion. Its history makes that reading too convenient.

Nihar Shanti Amla has worked in education for years. Marico’s July 2019 account of its initiatives describes partnerships involving children’s education and ‘Phone Uthao India Ko Padhao’, which connected urban volunteers with rural children practising spoken English. In May 2020, its ‘Padhai Par Lockdown Nahi’ initiative supported learning during school closures through phone conversations and virtual classes.

That record gives the new companion a more credible starting point than a hastily assembled empowerment slogan. The brand has previously used technology to connect people with educational help. Asking it to play a useful role beyond the dressing table is not a completely new proposition.

The size of that role, however, has changed. Connecting a learner with a volunteer or a structured lesson defines the help being offered. Inviting questions about everyday dilemmas and larger choices opens a much wider door.

In the launch statement, Vikram Karwal, chief marketing officer, India, Marico, reportedly describes the initiative as an extension of the brand’s relationship with women, intended to deepen trust and affinity. The commercial ambition is refreshingly legible: be useful often enough that the relationship survives between purchases.

Marketing and branding experts reckon that a familiar brand can make the first conversation easier. What it cannot do is borrow credibility indefinitely from another category. "Once it starts offering advice, consumers will judge the usefulness of that advice,” says Ashita Aggarwal, professor of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research.

A useful global parallel comes from Brazil, where Dove and UNICEF launched Topity in October 2021. Developed with Talk2U, the chatbot offered young people conversations and activities focused on self-esteem and body confidence, with content shaped by psychologists, specialists and adolescents themselves. A beauty brand was already helping take support beyond the bathroom shelf.

Crucially, Topity had a defined subject and a structured programme of eight challenges. That makes it a revealing comparison for Shanti’s broader invitation to discuss education, entrepreneurship and haircare. The strategic lesson is in the scope: familiarity can encourage someone to ask, while a clearly defined service gives them a better basis for deciding how much to trust the answer.

THE RACE TO BE ASKED FIRST

The obvious comparison would be another bottle of amla oil. The more revealing comparison is the next place a woman might take her question.

A friend. A teacher. A creator she follows. A Google search. A general-purpose AI assistant.

This is competition for a moment of attention before it is competition for a purchase. If Shanti becomes a useful first stop, Nihar could acquire a place in a customer’s routine that another ingredient claim or celebrity endorsement would struggle to secure.

The habit at stake is simple: whom do you ask first?

Nihar’s credible advantage is familiarity. A recognisable name, a conversational identity and access through WhatsApp can make an unfamiliar service feel easier to approach. The company says Shanti has been shaped using consumer psychographics and behavioural insights. Understanding how an audience likes to converse could help earn that first question.

Returning for the fifth question requires more. An answer needs to be relevant enough to save effort, specific enough to be useful and honest enough about what it cannot settle. A pleasant tone may encourage a conversation; it cannot do all the work within it.

For rival consumer brands, the temptation will be to acquire a helpful personality of their own. The more difficult response would be to offer a narrower service that solves one recurring problem exceptionally well. There is little strategic glory in being the ninth friendly chatbot on someone’s phone.

A CONFIDANTE WITH A COMMERCIAL ADDRESS

For someone reluctant to ask a basic question in front of others, a conversational service could offer a less intimidating place to begin. Repeating a question, changing one’s mind or admitting confusion can be easier when there is no person in the room whose opinion one fears.

That is a plausible benefit of the format, rather than an outcome established by this launch. It also explains why the language of companionship carries weight. ‘Confidante’ suggests discretion as well as warmth. ‘Guidance’ suggests a basis for the answer.

The public launch account describes the intended relationship much more fully than the limits of the advice. It does not, by itself, establish how Shanti checks consequential answers, handles sensitive disclosures or redirects questions requiring qualified help. Those details matter precisely because the brand is asking to be trusted.

A conversation about a business idea can quickly become a question about borrowing. A discussion about education can reach a costly course or an important application. A service that invites ordinary questions needs to recognise when the consequences have stopped being ordinary.

The more personal the promise, the greater the responsibility to make the boundaries clear. "A brand can build trust by helping a consumer find the right next step, including when that means directing her to someone else,” says Aggarwal.

WILL SHANTI EARN A SECOND CONVERSATION?

There is a useful commercial test here that an impressive launch film cannot answer. Does the consumer come back because the service helped?

A first visit can be bought with media. Repeat use has to survive the quality of the previous answer. Even that would be only one part of the marketing case: a useful conversation does not automatically become a bottle sold, and goodwill towards a service may not translate into preference at the shop.

Yet the experiment deserves attention because it gives brand purpose a practical examination. Each question creates a small occasion on which the promise can be fulfilled or exposed. The consumer gets to supply the script.

Nihar has a relevant history in education, an existing name to build around and a familiar route to the phone. Those are meaningful assets. How responsibly and helpfully the service uses them will determine whether Shanti becomes a habit or remains a campaign.

A hair-oil brand has asked women to put more than their hair in its hands. Now it has to earn the rest.