Myra Qureshi: Told Pakistan to Drop the Whitening Creams

In Pakistan’s beauty industry, the bestsellers promise one thing: lighter skin.Whitening creams dominate the shelves. Some are laced with mercury. Others contain steroids. Many aren’t labeled honestly. For decades, they’ve sold the same toxic fantasy: that fair skin will get you the job, the husband, the respect. That your natural color is a problem to be fixed.Myra Qureshi looked at that industry and decided to build something better.The ReturnMyra didn’t need to come back to Pakistan.She had the résumé that opens doors anywhere: an LSE degree, an Executive MBA from Georgetown, ESADE, years at Deloitte, Citi, and ING Bank. Thirteen years abroad. Over a hundred countries visited.But when she returned to Lahore in 2013, she found a problem that wouldn’t let her go.“I saw everyday creams filled with mercury and steroids being sold as ‘miracle’ products,” she says. “Counterfeit cosmetics. Misleading labels. Women putting toxic ingredients on their skin without knowing what was inside. No one was talking about it.”So she started building.What She BuiltIn 2014, Myra and her sister Rema Taseer launched Conatural with seven products and a radical premise: beauty shouldn’t require poison.One of Pakistan’s first natural and organic skincare brands. No whitening creams. No toxic chemicals. No...