“Our goal at K18 is to work with nature to develop products that are compatible with human biology, liberate expression, and are good for the planet,” says Suveen Sahib, K18 Hair’s CEO, who co-founded the company with his wife, Britta Cox in 2019. “Things get exciting when you consider that biotech allows us to engineer new, high-performance ingredients that can actually outperform those found in nature.
In hair care, cosmetic chemistry has allowed hair care professionals to achieve styling outcomes like colors, curling, and straightening. Yet typically, these provide only band-aid solutions for biology-based problems like dryness and frizz. That’s because cosmetic chemistry was not designed to care for, repair, or mimic biology. True repair, however, can be achieved through biology.
The K18PEPTIDE™ that powers the company’s flagship product is a high-performance ingredient born from biology, developed by applying computational models to mimic the molecular structure of human hair. As a result, the peptide is recognized as natural by the hair. And because it fits like a perfect puzzle piece, it helps reconnect broken pieces of hair or damaged sites—and it’s not washed away by water or shampoo like traditional bonding agents.
“Through our research, we realized the whole conversation that’s been happening in haircare around bond repair isn’t really addressing the core problem of damaged hair. The true indicator of hair strength and elasticity comes from the polypeptide chains in the inner layers of hair,” says Sahib.
“Biotechnology not only allows us to simplify routines, but as we engineer ingredients with new functionalities, we will create opportunities to be more creative with our routines, allowing us to express ourselves in never-before-seen ways,” Sahib concludes “The next generation of beauty products will be inspired by nature and engineered with biotechnology to work with our human biology. It will solve cosmetic, beauty, and personal care challenges that were previously unaddressable.