Sunscreen · Founding cohort, six brands
Your SPF 50 is probably real.
Nobody believes you.
We buy your sunscreen off the shelf, audit the evidence behind every claim on it, and commission confirmatory testing at an accredited laboratory. If the number holds, you get a permanent public page you can point every sceptical customer to.
Or jump to the twelve things we check.
Why an honest sunscreen brand has a problem
The claim
SPF is the only number on a beauty product where under-delivery causes actual harm. It is also the easiest number to inflate, and the hardest for a shopper to check.
The fallout
Independent testing controversies have made Indian shoppers assume every SPF number is inflated until proven otherwise — which punishes the brands doing it properly just as hard as the ones who are not.
The gap
If your sunscreen genuinely tests where you say it does, you currently have no way to prove it. A lab PDF nobody has heard of is not proof. It is another thing to be sceptical about.
How it works
We buy your product off the shelf
Not a sample you send us. The same unit a customer buys, from open retail, with the chain of custody documented. This is the part that makes everything after it worth reading.
We audit the evidence you already hold
Your SPF and UVA reports, the lab that ran them, the formula version they describe, your artwork, and every live claim across your site, pack, ads and marketplace listings. Twelve checkpoints, listed below.
We commission confirmatory testing
At a NABL or ISO/IEC 17025 accredited laboratory that we select and instruct, on the unit we bought. The lab invoices at cost, with no margin to us — you see the invoice.
If it holds, we publish the proof
A permanent public page showing what was tested, what was measured and what is verified, with a QR code for your pack and cleared wording your marketing team can use. If it does not hold, you get a private report and nothing is published.
The twelve checkpoints
Nothing here is secret. It is published deliberately, because a standard nobody can inspect is not a standard. What is difficult is reading your own evidence adversarially — which is something no one inside a brand is ever rewarded for doing.
The measurement
- —Sample identity — does the tested sample match the product you actually ship, at the current formula version and batch?
- —Laboratory competence — NABL or ISO/IEC 17025, valid at the date of test, with the method inside the accredited scope.
- —In-vivo SPF (ISO 24444) — panel validity, standard deviation and confidence interval, and whether the labelled number is supported rather than rounded up to.
- —UVA protection (ISO 24442 or ISO 24443) — PA rating derivation, UVA-PF to SPF ratio, critical wavelength where broad spectrum is claimed.
The formulation
- —Label value against measured value, under the labelling convention that currently applies in India.
- —Water and sweat resistance (ISO 16217 / ISO 18861) — whether the protocol that was run matches the claim that is printed.
- —UV filter legality — every filter and concentration against the Cosmetics Rules 2020, and against EU Annex VI where you export.
- —Photostability — whether the filter system still protects in the sixth hour, which an SPF certificate will never show you.
- —Stability, packaging and preservation — the SPF a customer gets at the end of shelf life, not on the day of testing.
The marketing
- —Claim language — broad spectrum, blue light, pollution, dermatologically tested, non-comedogenic, and any prohibited absolute such as sunblock, waterproof or sweat-proof.
- —Statutory labelling — Cosmetics Rules 2020 and Legal Metrology requirements, from licence number to ingredient order.
- —Live asset sweep — your website, pack, performance ads, marketplace and quick-commerce listings and influencer briefs, against the evidence actually held. Evidence in a folder is worth nothing if the ad running today says something else.
What you receive
- 01Evidence dossier assessment against all twelve checkpoints
- 02Claim register — every claim marked supported, partially supported, unsupported or not permitted, with the specific gap named
- 03Independent test results, and a like-for-like comparison against your own report and your label
- 04Remediation plan — every gap with a named fix, an owner and a sequence
- 05Rewritten claim language for anything you cannot currently support, written so it still sells
- 06A permanent public proof page, hosted here, that you can link from your PDP
- 07Print-ready QR code and verification mark in three formats, with a written usage licence
- 08Entry in the public register, with methodology version and expiry shown
- 09Pre-cleared wording your marketing team may use, so nobody overclaims by accident
- 10A findings call with you, and with your manufacturer if you want them there
What it costs
Claim Screen
₹15,000
72 hours · private
A fast look at every SPF claim you have live, rated against the evidence visible to us, with your three biggest exposures ranked by commercial consequence. Credited in full against either tier below if you proceed within 30 days.
Evidence Review
₹45,000
7 working days · private
The full twelve-point audit of the evidence you already hold, with a remediation plan and rewritten claim language. No public output. Built for the six weeks before a launch, when artwork can still change.
SPF Proof Report
₹75,000
4–6 weeks · public proof page
Everything in the Evidence Review, plus an off-the-shelf sample, confirmatory testing at an accredited lab, and — if it holds — a permanent public proof page, QR code and register entry. Laboratory costs are additional and passed through at cost.
Founding cohort rate. ₹95,000 thereafter.
All prices exclude GST. Fifty percent to commence, fifty percent on final report. Laboratory testing is invoiced separately, at cost, before testing begins. A second SKU submitted in the same round is charged at 25% less.
If it does not pass
Read this before you apply. The fee buys the assessment, not the outcome. No amount of money buys a particular answer, and anyone who asks to buy the mark directly is refused.
If your product does not meet the criteria, nothing is published and nothing is disclosed. You receive a private remediation report and a route back — re-assessment at half price once you have fixed it. Failure is never public. Withdrawal of an existing verification is, because that one is a promise made to shoppers.
Each year we publish how many products were assessed and how many were verified, with no brand named. It is the only thing that stops a verification from quietly coming to mean nothing more than having paid for one.
When brands come to us
- —You are launching an SPF product in the next 90 days
- —A competitor’s SPF claim was publicly challenged and yours is next
- —Someone has already questioned your number in public
- —A marketplace or quick-commerce listing was flagged over claim copy
- —You are entering retail, or exporting, and need a defensible claim file
- —You have reformulated, or changed manufacturer, since your last test
- —You are raising, and someone is about to read your claim file properly
The founding cohort is six brands. They are named permanently on the register, they shape the sunscreen criteria before the standard is fixed, and their pricing is locked for their next two products. When the six are taken, it closes.
Common questions
The Clean Sheet is an independent private certification scheme being designed in alignment with ISO/IEC 17065 and ISO/IEC 17067. It is not currently accredited. The SPF Proof Report is a point-in-time verification of specific named claims — not a certificate, not a badge for your whole product, and not a regulatory approval. The proof page states exactly what was verified and exactly what was not.
Nothing is published. There is no public page, no register entry, and we do not disclose the result to anyone. You receive a private remediation report telling you what failed, why, and precisely how to fix it — and you can re-submit at half price once you have. Finding out privately from us is most of what you are buying.
Two reasons. Your customer has never seen it and would not know how to read it, so it does you no commercial good. And in most engagements the report turns out to be genuine but to describe a formula from before the last reformulation. Worth knowing which of those you are.
No. The fee buys the assessment, not the outcome, and this is written into the engagement letter. The person who sells does not decide, every verdict is reviewed by a second assessor, and we publish annual figures for how many products were assessed against how many were verified — with no brand named. Without that denominator the mark would mean nothing.
No. Laboratory costs are passed through at cost and you see the invoice. Taking a margin on testing would give us a reason to over-test, and you would be right not to trust us.
Yes. Everything you submit is covered by a mutual NDA and is never published. The proof page shows measured results and verified claims only, never the quantitative formula.
Twelve months. It voids automatically if the formulation, the manufacturing site or the claims change, and you agree to tell us within 30 days if any of those happen. We can also withdraw a verification and remove the register entry if a later market check contradicts the original result.
You review it for factual accuracy, and you get five working days with the draft findings to submit further evidence or correct an error. You do not get to change the verdict, and that is stated in the engagement letter.
Find out before your customers do
Tell us which SPF product matters most to you commercially. We will tell you what we would check, what it would cost, and whether it is worth doing at all — before you pay anything.
The Clean Sheet is an independent private certification scheme being designed in alignment with ISO/IEC 17065 and ISO/IEC 17067. It is not currently accredited.