The video begins with a confession. A masked man sits before the camera, his voice heavy with manufactured concern. "Doctor, I am not getting marriage proposals because of my dusky skin," he laments. The "doctor" in question, his bio lists him as "Ayurvedic Treatment" provider, nods sympathetically before recommending Zandu Lalima syrup. As he speaks, a manipulated image fills the screen: a Black woman's face, split down the middle, one half dramatically lighter than the other.
The reel has been viewed 5.6 million times. It has been shared 175,000 times.
Ilyas Iqbal, the creator, has approximately 249,000 followers. His profile offers "treatments" for everything from obesity to diabetes, alongside what he calls a "dark-skin cure." When this reporter called to ask about his medical credentials, he hung up—but not before insisting: "Zandu Lalima makes you fairer with repeated use, but not European white. This isn't a paid promotion; I'm doing social service."
There is no doctor named Ilyas Iqbal registered with India's National Medical Council (NMC).
He is one of at least 26 Instagram accounts Decode identified—collectively followed by over 14.2 million users—using "Dr" in their names to sell skin-whitening products or promote DIY remedies. Of these, 14 names don't appear in the NMC's registered doctors database. Six are possibly valid. Four couldn't be verified. Two are from Pakistan.
They operate on platforms that explicitly prohibit what they're doing. Meta's advertising policies ban ads that "promote skin whitening or bleaching products that cause permanent skin color change" and content that attempts to "generate negative self-perception" to promote cosmetic products. Yet when Decode searched "skin whitening" in Meta's Ad Library, 20,000 results appeared.
The gap between policy and practice has created a sprawling industry where fake medical authority meets algorithmic amplification. Often, the targets are children.
The 'Doctor' Creators Promoting Skin Whitening
Dr Hemant Srivastava (@dr.hemant_srivastava), whose name doesn't appear in the NMC database, has over 611,000 followers. He posted a "transformation" video using images that appear to show a Black child and a blonde white child. The caption reads: "This drop treats dark skin in a child over 5 years." The video has 3.1 million views and 48,500 shares.
Like many such accounts, his name has no space between "Dr" and "Hemant", possibly to dodge liability while maintaining the appearance of medical authority.
Another creator, @dr_kapil_dev_, with over 722,000 followers, is more direct in a video with 1.2 million views: "If you want to make your children fair… this homeopathic drop works on both children and adults."
Creator @dr.hadiya_skin_hair, who claims to be a doctor with 657,000 followers, posted a video suggesting products to "brighten" skin, accompanied by an image of a girl with one half of her face darker and the other lighter. The video has 1.5 million views. Most of his 252 posts focus on "treating" skin and endorsing products.
A YouTube channel named Dr. Vijay Laxmi, with 3.33 million subscribers and 373 million aggregate views, has a playlist of 17 videos around skin lightening. One titled "make your skin fair" has 3.5 million views and features 17 products linked to Myntra and Flipkart. Her NMC registration could not be verified.
Buried in the comments beneath her video, a lone dissenting voice: "Hey there fellow people... you're beautiful just the way you are.... You don't need to be fairer to look beautiful... Because every colour is beautiful."
The comment has a few likes. The video has been shared 48,000 times.
An Experiment With A Teen's Feed
To understand what young people encounter online, Decode created a test Instagram account for a fictitious 14-year-old boy. Within minutes of searching "skin whitening" and engaging with a few reels, the algorithm began its work. Every second recommended video became about skin-lightening or achieving "pink lips."
This occurs despite Meta's stated policies requiring that cosmetic product ads target people 18 or older.
Among the recommended videos was content from @rohitsachdeva1, whose reel claiming celebrities achieve wedding-day glow through skin whitening has 5.9 million views. The caption reads: "Skin whitening cream at home…" The remedy involves rice, water, almonds, aloe vera gel, glycerine, and vitamin E oil.
Another featured 15-year-old actor Chahat Tewani appealing to "cutie teenagers" to use the infamous coffee DIY face pack. One of her reels titled "Removed my tan in 5 washes" shows before-and-after photos—the after image highly overexposed and appearing much whiter. The caption: "Comment for product link."
"Teenage is an age of identity seeking," explains Magdalene Jeyarathnam, a psychotherapist who specialises in body image issues.
"In that crisis, if a teenager is made to think that something is wrong with them because of their skin colour, it can make them feel less worthy, that they don't deserve a happy life or good things."
The Scale Of Deception
Of over 1,000 videos Decode analysed between August and October, 30-40% focused on skin whitening—dominating all other health remedy content. We identified 49 accounts posting skin-whitening videos, collectively followed by approximately 98 million users.
For most creators analysed, their most-viewed videos were about "treating" dark skin. One skin-whitening video has amassed 422 million views and 5.8 million shares, despite the account having only 279,000 followers.
"Brands and influencers are monetising the desperation arising from insecurity that goes back to our colonial past," Jeyarathnam says. "I see people getting bullied by their own family members for having dark skin."
While the end goal is product sales, "free" home-remedy videos build reach and trust. One account, @samritha.kr, posted a "skin transformation" video with 1.1 million views. After this reporter commented for the product link, an Amazon link arrived for Plix, marketed for "depigmentation."
The most popular content promotes dangerous mixtures. Videos demonstrating combinations of turmeric, coffee, toothpaste, and lemon—often heated and applied directly to skin—collectively attract hundreds of millions of views.
The account @pihuofficials.yt's most popular Instagram video, showing how to remove neck darkness, has 202 million views. Two other videos using baking soda and coffee mixtures have 158 million and 210 million views respectively.
Dr. Ann John Kurien, a Kerala-based dermatologist, is blunt about the dangers: "These mixtures can cause irritant contact dermatitis—skin inflammation where your skin may feel like it's burning, and a layer could get damaged."
She regularly treats desperate patients, often just before their weddings, who've tried these viral tricks. "Many patients come to me after trying this trick in desperation, often just before their marriage, to whiten their skin,” she says. The damage requires steroids and anti-inflammatory medication to reverse.
One popular promoter is @niteshsoniy, with 10.6 million Instagram followers, known as the "Sattu King" for bodybuilding advice. In one video, he claims: "To get a child with whiter skin, a woman should drink coconut water during pregnancy."
The Guidelines That Don't Work
According to the National Medical Commission's 2023 Professional Conduct Regulations, registered doctors must refrain from endorsing commercial products and posting information that exploits "patient vulnerability or lack of knowledge." The guidelines explicitly prohibit doctors from sharing "images of healed/cured patients, or surgery/procedure videos or images displaying impressive results."
Dr. Kurien says the content flooding Instagram clearly violates these rules: "It is not ethical for doctors to promote skin-whitening products or make DIY videos. Posting 'if you do this, you can treat this' type content goes against National Medical Commission guidelines."
Yet enforcement is virtually non-existent.
Platform guidelines are similarly ignored. Meta's policies prohibit skin-whitening product ads and content that generates "negative self-perception." YouTube states that while skin-whitening product ads don't inherently violate policies, it restricts "advertisements that contain discriminatory elements or promote colorism. "A YouTube spokesperson confirmed this to Decode but did not address questions about enforcement mechanisms or how the platform distinguishes between permitted and prohibited content.
Multiple requests for comment to Meta about enforcement went unanswered.
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulatory body, has since 2014 prohibited ads that "directly or implicitly show people with darker skin in a way which is widely seen as unattractive, unhappy, depressed or concerned." The guidelines rely on voluntary compliance.
Amazon's advertising policies prohibit skin-whitening products containing mercury and require third-party certification. Yet Amazon shows hundreds of products for "skin whitening cream," including sponsored listings. One reads: "Experience visibly fairer and radiant skin with Lotus Herbals WhiteGlow Gel Cream." Amazon did not respond to questions about how it distinguishes between prohibited and permitted products.
Flipkart shows over 7,800 results for "skin whitening" searches, many sponsored. A spokesperson said: "Flipkart requires all sellers to comply with Indian regulations, including the Consumer Protection Act and ASCI codes. We do not permit listings with false or misleading claims, and regularly remove non-compliant products."
The company did not provide data on how many products have been removed or details of its review process.
Most skin-whitening content relies on user testimonials or before-and-after imagery, which is prohibited under the National Medical Commission (NMC) social media guidelines. The guideline states that RMPs (registered medical practitioners) should not request or share patients' testimonials or recommendations or endorsements or reviews in social media. “They should refrain from sharing images of healed/cured patients, or surgery/procedure videos or images displaying impressive results under any circumstances,” it reads.
It further says that RMPs should not directly or indirectly indulge in the practice of purchasing "likes," "followers," or paying money so that search algorithms lead to their name being listed at the top, or registering on software programs that charge fees for higher ratings or soliciting patients.
The Fairness Industry
Content on "skin whitening" is often advertised on platforms, despite the guidelines. Influencer Anubhuti Chaudhary, with over 438,000 Instagram followers, has posted over 100 Facebook ads for skin-whitening products and "Korean remedies for dusky skin tone." YMI Ghar Soaps Private Limited has posted over 1,000 Google ads for "detanning" soaps featuring India's biggest influencers, including Elvish Yadav, Rajat Dalal, and Jannat Zubair.
How much Meta and Google earn from such ads cannot be estimated—platforms don't provide this data for non-political advertising.
The market is so lucrative that traditional healers and religious figures have entered the race for whitening cures under Ayurvedic or spiritual guises.
Rajeev Dikshit's content remains a major misinformation source, monetised through hundreds of fan pages.
Hindu traditionalist Rajeev Dikshit, who died in 2014, opposed globalisation as "new colonialism" yet ironically shared tips for whitening skin with milk.
A decade later, his content remains a major misinformation source, monetised through hundreds of fan pages. One YouTube channel has 5 million subscribers; an app has over 1 million downloads. In his most popular video, he claims: "Eating turmeric is much better than Fair & Lovely if you want to whiten your skin."
Muslim religious leader Maulana Farman Nasim, with 1.1 million followers on Instagram and 491,000 subscribers on YouTube, offers remedies for erectile dysfunction, PCOS, diabetes, liver disease, and dusky skin. His remedies combine dietary advice with Dua and Quran recitation.
Sadiq Husain Saifee, an elderly man in his sixties, shares remedies for various conditions, including dark skin. In one of his videos, which has over 9.7 million views and 229,000 shares, he says: "If you want to whiten your skin and become handsome, don't use cosmetics… use sandalwood and turmeric instead."
A self-proclaimed Hindu guru, Guru Manish Ji, has a remedy to whiten skin using sandalwood. He has over 1 million followers on Instagram and 1.17 million subscribers on YouTube. He runs a flourishing product business while claiming remedies for diabetes, infertility, and skin darkening.
Another is Kailash Bishnoi, who claims to be a yoga teacher from Rishikesh with over 2.8 million followers on Instagram and 298,000 subscribers on YouTube. Some of the captions of his videos read: "apply fuller's earth and whiten your skin," "apply rice water and whiten your skin," "spend 2 rupees (apply gram flour on your skin) and whiten your skin." One of his videos has been labeled false and has a fact-check link attached to it.
The oldest mainstream source we found is a December 2022 Vogue India video featuring actor Tamannaah Bhatia demonstrating homemade face masks. Her 1.8 million-view clip has been repurposed by numerous creators—often distorting her ingredients. Creator Fahad Sultan used two seconds of Bhatia's clip before adding his own twist: turmeric "contains a skin-lightening agent and reduces melanin."
The fake doctors and creators operate within a larger ecosystem that has normalised skin-lightening for decades.
For years, celebrities including Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, and Deepika Padukone, some of who are now Black Lives Matter activists, promoted products promising to "treat" brownness. In 2024, Emami Fair and Handsome, advertised by Khan, was fined 1.5 million rupees by Delhi's District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.
Following global backlash in 2020, Fair & Lovely—produced by Hindustan Unilever, a subsidiary of the British company Unilever—was rebranded as "Glow & Lovely," presented as "a more inclusive vision of beauty." The underlying message remains unchanged. "Fair" is now "glow," brownness is "pigmentation" or "dull skin." The advertised result is always lighter skin.
Fearing backlash, brands and influencers have shifted their language, explains Jeyarathnam: "Terms like 'fair' have been replaced with words such as 'glow'—subtle cues that psychologically communicate the same message."
"Brands and influencers are monetising the desperation arising from insecurity that goes back to our colonial past," Jeyarathnam says.
Meanwhile, the market continues to grow. India's skin-lightening industry, valued at over ₹5,000 crore (approximately $600 million) in 2023, shows no signs of slowing.
The law designed to stop this remains frozen. In February 2020, the Union Health Ministry proposed criminalizing fairness cream advertisements under amendments to the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954. The draft would have imposed imprisonment of up to two years and fines of up to ₹10 lakh for first-time offenders.
An RTI response from November 2024 confirmed the proposal remains "still pending," with no movement since November 2022. The health ministry did not respond to Decode's requests for comment.
Existing law offers limited recourse. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 provides for imprisonment and fines against misleading advertisements, but enforcement remains weak. The outdated 1954 Act, with minimal penalties, is rarely invoked.
Back on the test account created for this investigation, the algorithm continues its relentless work. Three months after the last interaction, the 14-year-old boy's feed still serves up skin-whitening content.
When searching for "gora kaise bane" ("how to become fairer") on this account, Meta AI-generated search results suggest several remedies, including applying a lemon mixture to the face—something Dr Kurien warns can cause skin burns.
The view count ticks upward. Somewhere in India, a real teenager watches.
Decode reached out to Meta, Instagram, Amazon, Google, and the Union Health Ministry for comment. Only Flipkart and YouTube responded.
This story has been edited by Adrija Bose