Mysore Sandal Soap ran out of sandalwood — a century-old brand operating at 25% capacity

Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Limited (KSDL) was founded in 1916 as the Government Sandalwood Oil Factory, one of the world's oldest producers of sandalwood oil. In 1918 it launched the Mysore Sandal Soap, a product so iconic that it held a Geographical Indication tag and was synonymous with Indian fragrance for over a century. The company was a government-owned monopoly with access to the sandalwood forests of Karnataka — the world's largest natural source of Santalum album.

By the 2010s, that supply was collapsing. Sandalwood poaching in Karnataka's forests had reached epidemic levels. The government's forest department, which was supposed to protect the trees, had neither the manpower nor the will to stop organized poaching gangs. The state's sandalwood regeneration programme had been neglected for decades. KSDL, which had depended on government forest auctions for its raw material, saw its supply of sandalwood dwindle to a trickle.

The impact was severe. KSDL's production dropped to just 25% of its manufacturing capacity. The company was forced to buy sandalwood on the open market at inflated prices and even began importing from other countries — a humiliating reversal for a company built on Karnataka's native sandalwood. The Mysore Sandal Soap, once a daily-use product in Indian households, became harder to find on store shelves. The brand, which had never needed to market itself, found that its core customer base was over 40 and younger consumers were choosing other brands.

By 2024, KSDL was a company running on fumes. The century-old brand that had once defined Indian fragrance was operating at a fraction of its potential, its survival dependent on a government that had allowed the sandalwood forests to be poached nearly empty.