Why I started Cravista.

I've always been the kind of person who keeps something scented burning at home. Diffusers, oils, candles — they were part of how I made a room feel like mine. But the more I used them, the more a quiet frustration grew: I couldn't find one I actually trusted.

It didn't matter where I looked. The mass-market names, the more design-led home brands, even the genuinely expensive ones — almost none of them would tell you plainly what was inside. Had the oils been tested? Was it soy or paraffin? What synthetics were in the fragrance? The price went up, but the honesty didn't. For something I was burning every day, in the room I breathe in, that silence bothered me.

So in late 2025 we started sampling — properly. We brought in samples from some of the leading factories, tested them, and saw for ourselves how these things are really made. That was the turning point.

Wellness has been the thread running through my life. Years ago in India I built a nutrition-and-yoga practice and put a great deal of myself — and my own money — into one idea: that people can take care of their health before lifestyle disease takes care of them. When I moved to Dubai, I kept wanting to find my way back into wellness, for this region and beyond. I just hadn't found the right form for it. Researching candles, it arrived almost on its own: what if a candle followed the shape of a day? Morning, to wake a room. Grounding, for the still, meditative hour. Evening, to draw a line under work. Night, for the quiet before sleep. Honest objects for the small rituals we already keep.

That's where the name came from. Cravista joins craving with iṣṭa (इष्ट), the Sanskrit word for the cherished — Cravista as the cherished answer to the craving. With technology, and now AI, pressing in from every side, there are hours when we need to switch it all off and reach for something real instead. The foundation of Cravista was laid in February and March of 2026, out of exactly that need.

Candles came first, and the rule was simple: if I'm asking you to light this every single day, I can't hand you something synthetic.

The candle began in a lab, not a kitchen

Most candles begin at a kitchen stove. Ours began in Lucknow. Before making a single candle for sale, I travelled to CSIR-CIMAP — India's national institute for medicinal and aromatic plants — to learn from its scientists how a genuine essential oil is told apart from synthetic and nature-identical ones. That trip became the starting point for a structured R&D programme back home: more than ninety experiments between April and June 2026, in a lab we set up for the purpose, led by a researcher with three decades of scientific experience whose career began in wax research.

We judged each candle on how it smelled — but we also tested the air around it as it burned, for volatile compounds, formaldehyde and fine particles, not scent alone. We watched how steadily the flame held, because a flickering flame quietly spoils the whole thing. And we turned down far more than we kept: paraffin, soy and palm waxes, and even most of the coconut waxes we sampled, because they turned out to be blends. We chose porcelain for the vessel only after testing it against glass. What was left is simple to say and hard to make: 100% coconut wax, 100% pure essential oils, nothing synthetic — and every batch of oil is GC-MS tested, so what we name is what's inside.

Not everything comes from China

Good sourcing means going wherever the best version of a thing is actually made — and being willing to look. For the lava stone, that meant Indonesia: we reached out, found the right person, and brought back the genuine material rather than the nearest substitute. The porcelain thumbstones are made by hand in a village in India. The frankincense at the heart of our grounding blend comes from Oman, where Boswellia sacra has been treasured for centuries, and the rest of our essential oils come through a reputed company in Spain with decades of experience in real botanicals. Some things are made in China — where certain pieces are genuinely made best — but the materials that carry the scent and the meaning are each brought from their own home. Years of buying and building a network make that search far faster than it sounds; we'd rather spend the time and bring every piece from the place that does it best.

One ritual at a time

One product led to the next. The Meditation Kit took shape over more than six months, assembled piece by piece: the handmade porcelain thumbstones, the Indonesian lava-stone mala, a grounding oil blended from real essential oils, and, at its centre, the singing bowl — the most symbolic object of the practice. None of it was fast. That was the point. Cravista is meant to be used every day — and, where it counts, kept for years.

That's Cravista.

About the author. Ankit Agarwal founded Cravista in Dubai. He has built businesses for 25 years, including Perfect Wellness, a nutrition and yoga practice with wellness centres in Delhi NCR.