Global Emerging PowerLeaders 2026 · World’s Best Indians
Raj Sandhan, CEO & Founder of Metro Health & Beauty Limited: The Pharmacist Who Rewrote What a Distributor Is For
Raj Sandhan, CEO & Founder of Metro Health & Beauty Limited, spent a decade behind London pharmacy counters before deciding the brands he stocked deserved a better route into Britain. Nineteen years on, MHBL has put Mustela, Filorga, Uriage and Rausch on UK shelves, and he still refuses to just move boxes.
At a glance
- Name — Raj Sandhan
- Title — CEO & Founder
- Company — Metro Health & Beauty Limited (MHBL), London, founded 2007
- Business — UK distribution and brand-building for premium health, beauty, dermocosmetic, haircare, baby-care, dental, wellbeing and fragrance brands
- Brands — Mustela (UK launch 2013), Filorga (2015), Uriage and Rausch (2018), Lalique Beauty, Theodent, Durance; 25-plus in total
- Channels — Independent pharmacies, pharmacy chains, clinics, department stores, LookFantastic, Sephora, Amazon UK, Cult Essentials and TikTok Shop
- Background — Pharmacist; around ten years in London pharmacy management; postgraduate business study at Kingston University
- Recognition — Global Emerging PowerLeaders 2026 – World's Best Indians, WCRC Leaders; Health Care & Beauty Innovator of the Year 2024; Entrepreneur Award, Health & Beauty
There is a shelf in any good British pharmacy, usually close to the counter, where the packaging goes quiet and the prices go up. Mustela for babies. Uriage thermal water. Filorga, the Paris range that started out in aesthetic medicine. Rausch, Swiss herbal haircare with 1890 printed on the box. None of these brands is British. Somebody had to persuade a pharmacist in west London and a buyer at Sephora to give them the space. For a good part of that shelf, that somebody is Raj Sandhan.
Sandhan is the chief executive and founder of Metro Health & Beauty Limited, the London distributor he started in 2007 and still owns and runs. MHBL now represents more than 25 health, beauty and wellbeing brands in the UK and sells them through independent pharmacies, chains, clinics, department stores and online retailers including LookFantastic, Sephora and Amazon. This year WCRC Leaders has named him to Global Emerging PowerLeaders 2026 – World's Best Indians, its recognition of Indian-origin founders and executives building businesses of consequence, in India and abroad.
Ten years behind the counter
Sandhan qualified as a pharmacist, moved to London, and spent about ten years managing pharmacies. It is an unusual start for a beauty entrepreneur and it shows in how he talks about the trade. Pharmacy management teaches you what patients ask for, what sits unsold, and how much a counter assistant's confidence in a product decides whether it leaves the shop. It also showed him, he says, the gaps in how specialist health and beauty products were reaching UK shelves.
He founded MHBL in 2007 to fill some of them, starting with herbal care and supplements, and picked up a postgraduate business qualification from Kingston University while he did it. “What began with herbal care and health supplements has evolved into a multi-category distribution business spanning dermocosmetics, baby care, haircare, dental care, fragrance and home fragrance,” he says. The sentence is tidy. It took nineteen years.
Four launches and a platform
The brand that changed the company's shape was Mustela, the French baby-care range, which MHBL brought to the UK in 2013. Filorga followed in 2015, Uriage and Rausch in 2018. Each arrived with the same problem: a strong reputation at home and almost none in Britain. Sandhan's answer was to build the whole apparatus around each one. “We built the infrastructure around these brands, from sales, warehousing and logistics to retailer relationships, education, marketing and digital activation, giving our partners a complete route to the UK market,” he says.
In 2019 the company put its trade ordering online. It looked like an administrative upgrade at the time and turned out to be the most useful decision of the decade. When Covid shut the usual routes a year later, pharmacies and retailers could still order and MHBL could still supply. Sandhan draws the lesson plainly: “Sustainable growth comes from anticipating change rather than simply reacting to it.” Plenty of founders say that. Fewer have a date-stamped example.
“For me, the innovation was not simply adopting a new digital channel. It was changing our view of what a distributor should be: from a company that moves products through the supply chain to a partner that actively develops brands, educates consumers and helps create demand.”
Raj Sandhan, CEO & Founder, Metro Health & Beauty Limited
A distributor that makes its own demand
The idea Sandhan is proudest of is also the one that most unsettles the traditional model. Distributors, in his telling, have historically stayed backstage: win the brand, supply the retailer, count the sell-in. He decided MHBL should take responsibility for demand as well.
That produced Cult Essentials, MHBL's consumer-facing platform, where dermatologists, trichologists and other clinicians run live sessions, take questions and talk about products in the context of skin and hair health, and where the company sells directly through TikTok Shop and its own channels. “Instead of waiting for retailers or brands to generate consumer demand, we became actively involved in building the market ourselves while still supporting our retail partners,” he says.
The commercial case is that a live session doubles as market research. Products, messaging and promotions get tested in real time and the findings go back into the retail plan. The cultural case is older than TikTok. Sandhan comes from a profession where you are expected to explain why before you sell what, and he has built a company that works the same way. “If people understand why a product is different and how to use it properly, you create much stronger and more sustainable brands.”
How he runs it
Ask Sandhan about leadership and the first thing he mentions is staying close to the detail. He wants to know what is happening on the ground, listen to the people nearest the customer, and then hand them the authority to act. His list of non-negotiables is long for a founder: empowerment and ownership, resilience, integrity, inclusive growth, customer relevance, continuous improvement. The one he keeps returning to is trust. “Reputation is built over years but can be lost very quickly.”
On talent he gives people responsibility before they feel ready, and tells them so. “I believe confidence and leadership are developed through experience, not just training.” On succession he is more direct than most owner-managers. A leader, he says, should be building people who can take on greater responsibility, “including their own. For me, that is not a threat; it is a sign that you have built something sustainable.”
The line that best explains him came when he was asked how he will keep his footing as the business and his own profile grow. “Leadership becomes dangerous when success removes honest feedback,” he said. He wants people around him who will argue.
The next five years
MHBL has recently been appointed UK distributor for Lalique Beauty, the French luxury fragrance house, which tells you Sandhan's ambition runs wider than dermocosmetics. His plan for the next three to five years has a familiar founder's shape and one less familiar twist. The familiar part is a larger portfolio, more channels, deeper relationships with pharmacy, clinical and retail partners, and a bigger consumer business built on expert-led education and social commerce. The twist is that he wants to be less involved. “I want to spend less time being involved in every operational decision and more time focused on strategy, partnerships, innovation and developing the next generation of leaders within the organisation.”
Success, as he defines it, is MHBL “operating at a significantly greater scale, representing a stronger portfolio of brands, developing new channels and partnerships, and being led by a capable leadership team”, while he turns to whatever comes after that.
Why he was chosen
World's Best Indians looks for Indian-origin leaders doing something that matters in the country they have chosen. Sandhan's contribution is easy to understate because the people who benefit from it never see it. A parent buying Mustela at a national chain, a clinic stocking Filorga, a pharmacist recommending Uriage for a child's eczema-prone skin: none of them thinks about the distributor, and that is the point. He took a role the industry filed under logistics and turned it into brand-building, professional education and, lately, direct commerce, from a company he founded and still owns.
He has a shorter version of what he is for. His purpose, he says, is “to build people, brands and partnerships that thrive.” It reads like a tagline until you notice the order of the nouns.
In his own words
What is different about how MHBL works with a brand?
“Since founding Metro Health & Beauty in 2007, I've focused not simply on distributing brands, but on building them in the UK market. We work closely with pharmacies, retailers, healthcare professionals and increasingly directly with consumers. I also believe our size is an advantage. We can combine the infrastructure and commercial discipline of an established distributor with the agility of an entrepreneurial business, and move from pharmacy education and professional advocacy to e-commerce, social commerce and live consumer engagement without losing the personal relationships on which the business was built.”
What will leaders in your industry need that they did not need ten years ago?
“Adaptability, digital fluency, commercial agility, strong relationship-building and the ability to empower people. Consumers are better informed, digital platforms increasingly influence purchasing decisions, and brands and retailers expect distributors to contribute far more than logistics and sales. I do not believe leaders need to be technical experts, but they do need to understand how technology can improve decision-making, productivity, marketing and customer engagement. Technology does not replace relationships, though. Trust will become even more valuable as the industry becomes more digital.”
What do you want to leave behind?
“A business that is bigger than any one individual: an organisation with a strong culture, trusted relationships and talented people that can continue growing for decades. My goal is not simply to build a bigger business. It is to build an enduring organisation that creates opportunities for its people, builds brands with integrity and leaves a meaningful footprint on the health and beauty industry.”
PowerFacts
Who is Raj Sandhan?
Raj Sandhan is the CEO and Founder of Metro Health & Beauty Limited (MHBL), a London-based distributor of premium health, beauty, dermocosmetic, haircare, baby-care, dental, wellbeing and fragrance brands. A pharmacist by training, he spent about a decade in pharmacy management in London before founding MHBL in 2007. Under his leadership the company launched Mustela (2013), Filorga (2015), Uriage and Rausch (2018) in the UK and has since added Lalique Beauty. In 2026 WCRC Leaders named him to Global Emerging PowerLeaders 2026 – World's Best Indians.
What does Metro Health & Beauty Limited (MHBL) do?
Metro Health & Beauty Limited is a UK distributor founded in London in 2007 that takes international health and beauty brands to market in Britain. It represents more than 25 brands across dermocosmetics, baby care, haircare, dental care, wellbeing, fragrance and home fragrance, and sells through independent pharmacies, pharmacy chains, clinics, department stores and e-commerce partners including LookFantastic, Sephora and Amazon UK. MHBL provides sales, warehousing, logistics, retailer relationships, professional education, marketing and digital activation, and runs the consumer-facing Cult Essentials platform for expert-led live education and social commerce.
Why was Raj Sandhan named a Global Emerging PowerLeader 2026 by WCRC Leaders?
WCRC Leaders recognised Raj Sandhan for building Metro Health & Beauty Limited from a herbal-products start-up into one of the UK's established routes to market for European dermocosmetic and wellbeing brands, for redefining the distributor's role to include demand creation, professional education and direct-to-consumer commerce, and for a leadership record built on long-term partnerships, early digital investment and developing people. The recognition identifies Indian-origin leaders building businesses of global consequence, from India and from the countries they have made home.
About Global Emerging PowerLeaders 2026 – World's Best Indians
Global Emerging PowerLeaders 2026 – World's Best Indians is a WCRC Leaders recognition of Indian-origin founders, chief executives and senior leaders building businesses of global consequence, from India and from the countries they have made home. Leaders are assessed on the scale and difficulty of what they have built, the strategic importance of their sector, their leadership record and their stated plans for the next five years. Profiles draw on a structured leadership questionnaire completed by each honouree, company disclosures and public sources.
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