Nikhil’s – Aaradhya

Another “Premium Incense” from Nikhil’s.

Aaradhya had been on my ‘curiosity list’ for a while, and after someone from Brazil messaged me on Instagram at the beginning of the year (2025) asking whether I would review Aaradhya, I added it to my cart during my most recent order from Ephra World.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten that already last year, when I reviewed Sandal Premium, a user on Reddit had warned me that Aaradhya is very similar to that one.

Aaradhya costs €2.25 for a pack of 15 sticks at 9″ (approx. 23cm) in length, weighing about 20g. That’s €0.15 per stick.

The guy on Insta, I think the name was Paulo, told me he’d read on Nikhil’s profile that Aaradhya is made with natural agarwood oil and wanted to hear my opinion on it.
Unfortunately, his account has since been deleted, as well as the chat messages, and I have no way of contacting him.

The sticks are very similar in make to the above-mentioned Sandal Premium; they are extruded sticks, likely made of sawdust mixed with a binder and dipped into a perfume solution after drying. With Aaradhya, the sticks were also dusted with wood powder afterwards, perhaps to give them more the appearance of masala incense.

The raw sticks smell volatile, somewhat piercing; not as much like disinfectant as Sandal Premium did, but similar. The scent reminds me rather of hairspray and a little of cleaning products.

When you light a stick, it shows a hungry, sooty flame that doesn’t quickly produce an ember on the stick. The fire draws the volatile components from the base material, like from a wick.

Again with Aaradhya, I find that the volatile solvent scent masks the actual perfume.
The aroma (if I do smell it) is woody, warm, and vaguely oriental, yet always accompanied by the almost piercing scent that’s already present in the raw sticks.

I seem to be particularly sensitive to this smell. Steve also reviewed Aaradhya not too long ago, and although he mentions the volatile and ‘chemical’ character of the sticks, he still gave them a score of 38 points.

To me, Aaradhya smells like an attempt to remove the lingering scent from an empty tin of bakhoor using alcohol.
The fragrance concept is, at best, barely perceptible to me, and I wouldn’t recommend Aaradhya.

At a retail price of 15 cents per stick in the EU, the likelihood that Aaradhya contain real, natural agarwood oil is practically zero; it’s one of the most expensive essential oils in the world.
I don’t know enough about agarwood and oudh to judge at what price point the use of real agarwood or its extracts becomes realistic, but anything offered at the average price of a pack of incense sticks cannot actually contain agarwood.
That doesn’t mean you can’t get nice smelling incense with an agarwood or oudh scent at this price point; you just have to be fully aware that synthetic fragrance materials will be used in them.