HK Vitals’ creator-commerce playbook for selling collagen

When HK Vitals signed Yami Gautam to explain why skin needs collagen, the assignment was clear: make an unfamiliar ingredient feel familiar. The HealthKart-owned brand’s July 2026 film, Skin ko chahiye, Skin ka protein—created by Enormous—used consumers’ existing understanding of protein to introduce collagen as the key protein in skin. But the brand’s leadership says awareness is only the opening move.

“We don’t want scientific information to be reduced to a superficial marketing statement,” Divyam Singh, Associate Vice President, HK Vitals, told BestMediaInfo.

01 · Each channel gets a job

HK Vitals views the modern purchase path as fragmented. Creators spark discovery, digital content explains ingredients, marketplace reviews build confidence, and e-commerce or quick commerce closes the sale. That means media planning starts with the role a channel plays, not the channel itself.

For ingestible beauty—a category still establishing itself in India—those roles are especially important. Consumers already understand creams and serums. Collagen and glutathione, by contrast, need a clearer explanation of what they contain, why they matter and how they fit into an existing skincare routine.

02 · Celebrity visibility, creator credibility

The Gautam film ran on Instagram, YouTube and OTT. Around it, HK Vitals has built a broader creator ecosystem of beauty, fitness and lifestyle voices who show the products inside real routines. The portfolio stretches from collagen and skincare to multivitamins, magnesium and hair nutrition.

Singh frames the sequence this way:

• Celebrity campaigns: make a new category culturally familiar
• Creators and UGC: demonstrate how products fit daily life
• Experts and education: explain ingredients and the evidence
• Performance marketing: convert interest into purchase

The brand has also placed supplements in lifestyle contexts through collaborations such as Horse Pilates Club and the limited-edition Radiance Chapter kit, rather than presenting them only as functional products.

03 · Quick commerce moves from refill to discovery

HK Vitals initially thought of quick commerce as a replenishment channel for products shoppers already knew. Singh now sees wider supplement assortments as a way to introduce consumers to categories they had not considered. That turns q-commerce into a touchpoint where awareness, discovery and purchase can happen together, much closer to the transaction.

04 · The real KPI is the repeat

Nutritional supplements do not offer the instant cosmetic payoff of a topical product. They depend on consistent use over time. So HK Vitals is shaping communication around realistic expectations and convenient routines. Singh says consumers need to understand that nourishment from within is about supporting the body over time—not promising an overnight transformation.

The brand is also pursuing newer segments, including men who are more open to skin, hair and appearance-related nutrition. As more players enter ingestible beauty, the test for HK Vitals will be less about first-time collagen trials and more about how many consumers find a reason to keep coming back.

Source: BuzzInContent Publications Private Limited

Mad About Marketing Desk The strategists and writers at Mad About Marketing, writing up what we see in the work every week.