Brands Built By Women: AURRA

Celebrating emerging female-founded brands you'll want to know.

Since November 2025, we've been spotlighting inspiring consumer brands built by incredible women from all walks of life - founders who are creating a positive impact through their businesses.

We started Mindful Brand to support women succeed in business. Not just through what we do, but also in how we shop.

Deciding which businesses to support is a personal choice.

If, like us, you prefer to champion female-owned brands, we hope you enjoy this series.

Today, we’re featuring AURRA, founded by Apneet Sandhu in 2025 in the UK.

About the Brand

AURRA is a modern fragrance house reimagining traditional attars for today. Creating highly concentrated, alcohol-free perfume oils crafted by generational perfumers in Kannauj - where the art of attar-making has remained unchanged for centuries - each scent is designed to evolve on skin and be experienced as a daily ritual.

Created for individuals who value intentional luxury and a conscious approach to fragrance, the brand speaks to those drawn to craftsmanship, subtlety, and meaning in everyday experience.

AURRA offers a refined alternative to conventional perfumery, its alcohol-free, concentrated oils last longer, sit closer to the skin, and evolve uniquely on each wearer. Reimagined through a modern lens, the brand brings together heritage, performance, and skin-friendly formulation.

Meet the Founder

Apneet is a first-time founder, born in India and moved to London for university, where she studied Accounting at Queen Mary University of London and later completed a Master's in Finance at Imperial College London.

Before starting AURRA, which took two years of thoughtful development, Apneet worked in strategy at Apple and in consulting, with a focus on growth, performance, and consumer insight.

AURRA reflects both her cultural roots and a modern, design-led perspective on fragrance.

How She Started

AURRA began from a personal gap. After developing sensitivities to alcohol-based perfumes, Apneet found herself searching for a gentler, more skin-friendly alternative that still felt refined and luxurious.

She had always been aware of attars, but began exploring them more deeply during this time. While drawn to their purity and how beautifully they evolved on skin, she found the category often felt outdated and disconnected from a modern audience.

Seeing that many contemporary perfumes prioritise projection over how they feel on skin, Apneet set out to create something more intentional - fragrance as a ritual, not just a product. AURRA came to life.

What She Learned

Apneet has learned to be intentional about what she builds and why. It is easy to get influenced by trends or what others in your industry are doing, but clarity on your own point of view is what truly sets a brand apart.

One thing she learned early on is how much information asymmetry exists, especially in industries like fragrance. There are many vague claims and narratives that customers have become used to hearing, even when they are not fully grounded in formulation or substance.

That made it even more important for her to build AURRA with clarity and integrity. Know what you stand for, understand your product deeply, and let every decision reflect that. Consistency builds trust, and trust builds a brand.

Where to shop

AURRA is available to buy at www.aurralondon.com.

Instagram: @aurralondon

Support brands built by women. Don’t just say it. Shop it. Stock it. Fund it.