2020 may be the year of “ok bad person” (zoomer’s version of OK boomer towards millennials) and atrocious VICE articles, but deep down we all know there are even crazier things going on in the world. One of our contacts at Buzzfeed Croatia gave us a lead on a story about Indonesian Yogurt companies using “whitening spray” to augment the color of their dairy product. We investigated further, only to find out this product is actually illegal, and is the source of endless controversy in certain pockets of the internet.
Nurraysa, a popular Indonesian skin care company, allegedly got its foot in the door with the Yogurt company in 2013 – when they were struggling to stay in business as Dannon’s product line began rapidly expanding.
Segar & Nikmat reached out to us in what appeared to be a moment of desperation as their business was going under. Dannon had just released a new line of animal crackers and was blowing all the competition out of the water. So the CEO of S & N thought, “Hey, why not? If Dannon wants to play hard-ball let’s try something new and progressive.” Right around that time is when we received a phone call inquiring about one of our secret products – an experimental spray we had been developing for years designed to reverse the effects of overexposure to UV rays.
anonymous Nurraysa employee
Nurraysa’s product had yet to be released to the public, but had been proven effective in numerous human experiments. See image below for a leaked image from one of their experimental trials.
Little did Nurraysa know, by selling the patent to their product to S & N, this would give rise to an entire new Indonesian black market. Illegal whitening spray blew up almost overnight.
S & N spent hundreds of thousands of dollars tweaking the formula to work on their product, until one day, January 28th 2014, they found the right formula. The product was being used on every yogurt release not even one week later, and the formula was leaked to the general public within the first two months.
7 years later, black market entrepreneurs are synthesizing “fake” illegal whitening spray, which has become a multi-million dollar market. Similar to the rise of knock-off cosmetics, people are still paying an arm and a leg for the real thing.
There are reports of original Nurraysa beta sprays being sold for upwards of $50,000.
Why is it illegal though, you might ask? The Indonesian government outlawed the spray due to alleged ties with the Dannon company, doing anything within their power to squash the competition. Dannon officials were scratching their heads when S & N became a threat to an international powerhouse company nearly overnight.
“We have no ties with the Indonesian government and have no interest in anything they do,” said the CEO of Dannon in an off the books interview.
Is Nurraysa in the wrong? Segar & Nikmat? The Indonesian government? Dannon? Or none of them? Follow for more updates as this story continues to unfold.
Despite Everything 