Who is Myra Qureshi and what is Conatural?

Myra Qureshi is a Pakistani entrepreneur with an LSE degree, Georgetown Executive MBA, and thirteen years of international corporate experience who returned to Lahore in 2013 and founded Conatural with her sister Rema Taseer. Launched in 2014 with seven products, Conatural is one of Pakistan's first natural and organic skincare brands, built explicitly to reject the whitening cream model that dominates the market.

What is wrong with the whitening cream market in Pakistan?

Whitening creams dominate Pakistani beauty shelves, many laced with mercury or steroids and labeled misleadingly or not at all. They sell a toxic fantasy that lighter skin earns better opportunities, relationships, and social standing. Myra found women applying dangerous ingredients without knowing what was inside, and no one in the industry was willing to say publicly that this was a problem.

How successful has Conatural become since its launch?

By 2020, Conatural had grown to more than 50 products with retail partnerships across Pakistan and exports to the UK and UAE. That year, mid-pandemic, Myra raised $825,000 in pre-Series A funding, having built a brand the industry told her Pakistani consumers didn't want because they were too committed to whitening. The market disagreed.

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Myra Qureshi: Told Pakistan to Drop the Whitening Creams

By Joseph Tito • March 2, 2026

Myra Qureshi holding clean beauty product proud

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...