Fake 'glow creams' packed with hidden steroids are thriving from Hyderabad’s lanes to Nepal’s green-box stalls, creating a regional health threat.
Published Nov 20, 2025 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Nov 20, 2025 | 7:00 AM
An underground 'beauty-offering' ecosystem is thriving on India's weak enforcement of rules and an insatiable desire for instant fair skin.
Synopsis: In a country obsessed with fair skin, an underground ecosystem that makes, bottles, and sells dubious creams as ‘beauty’ products. An inadequate law-enforcing mechanism helps this ecosystem thrive even as dermatologists see its aftereffects in patients with irreversible skin damage.
In the bylanes of many cities, including Hyderabad, living rooms often double up as beauty labs, where “Cinderella Creams” and “Dubai Creams” are made, bottled and sold.
Marketed as Korean, Ayurvedic or imported fairness products in gaudy packages, these creams conceal a dangerous truth: many contain steroids potent enough to erode the skin barrier and, in extreme cases, shut down a person’s natural hormone production.
Dermatologists at South First’s Dakshin Health Summit-2025 raised serious concerns about such a practice that no longer remains in the fringes, but has become an underground ecosystem thriving on India’s weak enforcement of rules and an insatiable desire for instant fair skin.
In Hyderabad, dermatologists see the impact daily. Dr Rajetha Damisetty, Senior Dermatologist and Director of Mohan’s Skin and Hair Clinic, said an unlabelled product, known as ‘Dubai Cream’, has been sold openly in local cosmetic stores. The cream has neither an ingredient list nor regulatory oversight.
“It goes only by that name–no label, no content list, nothing,” she said while moderating a session on ‘Steroid Abuse in Dermatology’.
Similar creams circulate across the country in different names and avatars. In Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, dermatologists frequently encounter damage from “snow creams” and “glow creams” used during bridal facials.
Dr Amarendra Pandey, a Senior Dermatologist from Jabalpur, did not hide his concern over the pan-Indian trend.
Doctors opined that in several states, tubes packaged with Arabic or Thai letters promise overnight skin transformation.
A “Korean glass-skin” cream has become a trend, often found to contain clobetasol or hydroquinone.
Even in cities like Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Kochi, parlours have been selling small tubes of home-mixed fairness formulas made from bleaching powder, steroid creams and over-the-counter brightening lotions.
Senior Dermatologist Dr P Usha described how the process worked with impunity.
“Parlour operators make fairness creams at home by mixing Stillman’s bleach, pearl cream, SkinLite and Betnovate. They even provide containers, teach others how to market and sell them as an Ayurvedic preparation,” she said.
These jars were then branded as herbal, natural or chemical-free products and sold for anywhere between ₹300 and ₹3000. People who use them unknowingly apply powerful steroids on their faces every day.
“People came with steroid-induced acne, modified face, erythema — all because they were told it was Ayurvedic,” Dr Usha said.
The problem transcends borders. Nepal has been flooded with what many refer to as “Cinderella Creams”— bright green packs with Korean, Japanese or Chinese letters that almost no customer could read. They are mostly marketed through the ubiquitous green-box stalls in the Himalayan nation.
Dr Sudip Parajuli, Associate Professor at the Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, described how these creams were bypassing pharmacies entirely and appearing in cosmetic stores, street shops and small markets.
“These creams come in fancy green boxes with Korean, Japanese, and Chinese writing. You cannot read the content. They are sold in cosmetic shops, not pharmacies,” he said.
They move across the border easily since the creams are cheaper in India. “The lower the price in India, the more easily it comes here (Nepal). And the misuse rises,” Dr Parajuli said.
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A major part of the problem is the shield provided by the Ayurvedic label. Experts repeatedly pointed out that the Ayurvedic and “proprietary medicine” categories in India allow manufacturers to bypass rigorous testing.
“You can put in anything and call it Ayurvedic proprietary medicine. If you expose it, it becomes a matter of pride — as if you’re insulting Ayurveda,” the panellists said.
This loophole has given illegal manufacturers cover, allowing them to market steroid-laced creams as traditional or herbal beauty solutions.
Years ago, Dr Damisetty came across a wave of patients harmed by a product known locally as “Pearl Cream,” which was widely advertised on pre-social-media television.
After treating multiple patients in a single week, she ordered the cream herself. “We got it delivered in two hours, tested it — and it had steroids,” she said.
The discovery led to a dramatic raid, arrests and media coverage. But the manufacturer returned months later with a slightly adjusted label and the same dangerous formula.
“For a few years, we kept ordering it every few months and testing it again,” she said, recalling how they once maintained a steroid-testing budget just to monitor these products.
Across India and neighbouring countries, the results are the same: damaged skin barriers, persistent redness, thinning, steroid-induced acne, withdrawal reactions and broad purple stretch marks that are almost impossible to treat.
Many patients have no idea that a so-called “Ayurvedic glow cream” or “Korean whitening cream” could contain the strongest topical corticosteroids known in dermatology.
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A perfect combination of affordability, secrecy and aspiration helps the market thrive, dermatologists said.
These creams are cheap, sold everywhere, aggressively marketed and often endorsed by parlours, shopkeepers or local beauticians. The products are deliberately unlabeled, confusingly labelled, or falsely labelled.
They promise quick results, and they deliver – at first. That short-lived glow is what keeps customers hooked until the damage becomes irreversible.
Dermatologists warned that unless the sale of such products is regulated as strictly as pharmaceutical drugs, India will continue to export steroid-modified faces, resistant fungal infections and preventable dermatological disasters to its neighbouring countries.
“These are not beauty products. They are unregulated steroid drugs masquerading as fairness creams. And they are playing with people’s lives,” Dr Usha warned.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
