Sunscreen may still see its biggest sales spike in summer, but India’s skincare brands are increasingly trying to ensure the category does not remain trapped within a single season. As temperatures rise, marketing spends across sunscreen brands accelerate sharply, spanning creator collaborations, digital education, quick commerce visibility, outdoor activations, and performance-led campaigns.
But beneath the seasonal urgency lies a larger ambition: turning sunscreen from a summer essential into an everyday skincare habit.
To understand how brands are navigating this shift, Marketing Mind spoke with leaders from some of India’s prominent sunscreen and skincare players. From moment marketing and influencer accountability to media allocation and year-round consumer behaviour, the conversations revealed how the category is evolving far beyond SPF-led functional messaging.
Moment Marketing: Breakthrough Tool or Brand Risk?
The last few sunscreen seasons have seen a dramatic shift in how brands speak. Gone is the clinical, SPF-as-obligation tone; in its place are bold cultural narratives and storytelling that barely mentions the product. But as the campaigns get louder, the question of whether virality can hold hands with category trust grows louder too.
Stuti Kothari, Co-Founder, WishCare, sees the answer in staying grounded. “As a consumer-first brand, just keeping it educational is our approach. We feel that aligns and helps our audience most, in making the right decision and getting the actual product for them.”
Vaishali Gupta, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Hyphen, shared the instinct but added a tactical layer, explaining, “Moment marketing definitely helps cut through the clutter, but only if it stays rooted in the product. Consumers still avoid sunscreen because of very real concerns, so cultural moments need to lead back to solving those behaviours.”
Meanwhile, Nitin Dhawan, Co-Founder, JungleBerry, sees the shift as a genuine opportunity.He explained, “With bold narratives and cultural hooks, brands are making sunscreens a part of everyday lifestyle conversations. But if campaigns lean too heavily on virality without anchoring back to product truth, it can erode trust over time.”
On the other hand, Arjun Soin, Founder and CEO, Clinikally, frames the risk as a literacy problem. “Virality without education is a short bet. When someone understands why SPF 50 PA+++ matters for Indian skin tones and climate conditions, they advocate for it long-term,” he said.
Similarly, Shaily Mehrotra, Managing Director, Fixderma, pointed to a more structural concern in an already noisy market.
“One of the biggest challenges today is over-information and trend fatigue. If communication moves too far away from the product, it can start adding to the confusion. Storytelling should support the product, not replace it,” she noted.
Budget Allocation: Where The Money Moves When Summer Hits
Sunscreen is one of the few skincare categories where intent and urgency converge sharply within a single quarter. When the heat climbs, so do the marketing spends, and every brand has its own philosophy for where to point the hose.
WishCare takes a year-round view that makes the summer surge feel almost incidental. “Our focus on sunscreen starts much before summer. We invest in awareness and education throughout the year. The overall approach remains fairly balanced across channels, with agility to respond to where the consumer is shopping at the moment,” said Kothari.
Meanwhile, Fixderma’s Mehrotra is precise on the numbers during peak summer. “Nearly 50-60% of the budget shifts toward D2C through YouTube, Meta, and OTT platforms like JioHotstar and Amazon MX Player, and e-commerce, including quick commerce. Offline, through dermatology clinics and pharmacies, holds a steady 25–30%,” she noted.
Clinikally runs a similar playbook with a pre-season twist.
“Pre-summer is where we invest in brand awareness. Roughly 60–70% of the seasonal budget gets compressed into the April–June quarter,” said Soin.
On the other hand, Dhawan noted that summer marks a shift in consumer intent, not just volume. “We see a sharper tilt toward performance marketing and conversion-led spends, with faster decision-making and more aggressive budget deployment,” he added.
Hyphen’s Gupta echoed the urgency, explaining, “E-commerce and Q-commerce become especially important during this period due to higher purchase intent and shorter decision cycles. What also changes is the kind of communication we prioritise, which aims to simplify decision-making.”
Offline Vs Digital: Rethinking The Outdoor-Only Myth
Sunscreen has long been marketed as an outdoor product. But in a country where urban consumers spend eight-plus hours under blue light and fluorescent tubes, that framing is increasingly at odds with both the science and the data on where people are actually shopping.
WishCare has been digital-first from the start. Building on that, Kothari highlighted, “A large part of our communication and discovery happens online. At the same time, offline is built through outdoor activations that align with how and where the product is used.”
Hyphen’s Gupta made a similar case for digital as the vehicle of behaviour change.
She went on to say, “Digital allows us to go beyond talking about SPF and actually show how different formats fit into daily routines. Visual, demo-led content is what helps move sunscreen from an occasional outdoor product to something people use consistently.”
That said, Clinikally’s Soin is the most vocal about dismantling the outdoor myth altogether. “UV damage does not discriminate between indoors and outdoors. The nuanced, education-led conversation we want to have happens online,” he emphasised.
JungleBerry sees the two as layered rather than competing.“Digital builds aspiration and understanding, while offline reinforces trust and drives conversion through high-context placements: travel hubs, vacation hotspots, premium retail,” said Dhawan.
From another perspective, Fixderma’s Mehrotra drew the clearest dividing line between the two channels. “Offline builds trust and validation through dermatologists and pharmacies. Digital drives behaviour change and consistent, everyday usage at scale, addressing barriers like texture, white cast, and daily compliance,” she affirmed.
The Creator Economy Matures From Hype To Accountability
A few years ago, influencer marketing in skincare was largely a visibility game: big names, big reach, and hope that some of it stuck. Today, across this cohort of brands, the approach has grown notably more rigorous.
Kothari put creators at the centre of its education strategy. “The influencer and creator community are our key partners in driving education and building trust, especially in a category like skincare. A significant part of our efforts goes into creating meaningful, informative content and ensuring it reaches the right audience,” she added.
For Hyphen’s Gupta the focus is on real-use demonstration over claims. “Our approach is to work with creators who can authentically demonstrate product experience in everyday life. These real-use scenarios build stronger trust than promotional posts ever could,” she noted.
Meanwhile, Clinikally’s Soin is the most metric-driven. Drawing from the brand’s experience, he noted, “Influencer marketing has moved from experiment to infrastructure. We track attributable revenue against every rupee spent and have consistently delivered above a 3x return on influencer investment. Someone with 40,000 highly engaged followers in the skincare niche outperforms a celebrity post almost every time.”
On the other hand, Fixderma has made a calibrated shift, wherein Mehrotra explained, “We focus on creators who can simplify skincare, explain ingredients, and drive informed usage rather than just follow trends.”
Building Beyond The Summer Spike
The numbers confirm what everyone in the category already knows: summer is the money quarter. But what separates forward-thinking brands from seasonal plays is what they are building toward once the heat breaks.
Fixderma puts a precise number on the concentration. “Typically, about 43% of our overall revenue comes from sunscreen during the April-June period,” noted Mehrotra. JungleBerry’s Dhawan estimates a wider band. “The April-June quarter amounts for roughly 35–45% of annual sales,” he elaborated. Both acknowledge the spike is real, but frame it as a floor to build on, not a ceiling to accept.
However, WishCare takes care to distinguish between category seasonality and brand strategy. Kothari briefed, “Sunscreen does see a natural surge during the summer months. However, as a brand we look at building consistent, year-round usage, even as categories experience seasonal peaks.”
On the other hand, Hyphen’s Gupta echoes the ambition, noting, “We are seeing a gradual shift towards more consistent, year-round usage. Our focus on lightweight, non-greasy formats helps drive repeat usage beyond peak months. The larger opportunity lies in building daily habits and reducing seasonality over time.”
Clinikally’s platform model provides a structural hedge with Vitamin C serums, moisturisers, and pigmentation-focused products drive demand across seasons. Soin explained, “The goal is for sunscreen to be our summer hero, not our entire story.”
JungleBerry’s Wildly Ayurvedic positioning naturally supports everyday adoption. “Consumers are increasingly looking for formulations that feel safe, nourishing, and suitable for everyday use, not just harsh sun exposure,” he added.
The longer arc is clear: the brands that will define India’s sunscreen market are not the ones who win April. They are the ones who make sunscreen as unremarkable and non-negotiable as a morning face wash. That work, it turns out, never really goes off-season.
