Hygiene products maker Sirona Hygiene, which was bought by the Good Glamm Group nearly a year ago, is eyeing sales of Rs 500 crore over the next three to five years.
“If all goes well, we should be touching Rs 200 crore at the end of FY23,” said Deep Bajaj, CEO and Co-founder of Sirona Hygiene, which was founded in 2014 and manufactures products like feminine pain relief patches, menstrual cups, period stain removers, and anti-chafing rash creams.
With Gen Z and millennial consumers leading purchases for online feminine hygiene products, reports suggest that the sector is likely to touch $71 billion worldwide by 2026.
Sirona is focusing on three key buckets—product innovation, offline expansion, and profitability—to more than double sales numbers.
The startup raised Rs 100 crore from the Good Glamm Group In December 2021.
“Good Glamm has played a very important role in D2C, helping us build and sell from our own website. We are using the Group CTO to help us with tech innovation,” Deep said. This has helped Sirona grow 4X on the D2C website.
The femtech startup has also benefited from Good Glamm’s content ecosystem and integrated learnings from the BabyChakra community, which comprises largely of new moms.
Product innovation
Sirona is riding the femtech wave in India by developing innovative products to fill gaps in the market.
“Three categories where there is going to be product innovation are period care, intimate care, and hair removal,” Deep said.
Period care, which includes menstrual cups, sanitary pads, etc., is one of the biggest categories for Sirona and contributes 70-80% of its revenue. According to the company, more than one million women use its menstrual cups, and it has made further inroads by offering products like menstrual cup sterilisers, cleaners etc.
The hair removal category, which includes products like razors, hair removal creams, and toilet hygiene, is Sirona’s next big seller.
The femtech company is looking to add more products and push the pedal on innovation to grow further. It has already launched eight new products this year, including skin-friendly fashion tapes that can help avoid wardrobe malfunctions.
Sirona’s next few products will be within these key categories, in a bid to add “further depth to the portfolio”.
Offline expansion
The next big focus area? Sirona wants its products to be available in general trade channels.
“We are present in all big format stores but we are looking to establish presence in mom and pop stores too,” Deep said.
At present, the company gets about 80% of its revenue from online sales, garnering the remaining 20% from offline channels. It expects a large portion of incremental growth and revenue to come from offline expansion.
“We will be looking to go deeper into existing categories by taking them offline. The categories we are dominating online, we will take offline,” Deep said.
Global expansion is also on the cards. Sirona products are now available in parts of the US and the Middle East, but the plan is to expand that as well.
“We would like to expand this space next year and be available at leading stores and Amazon. It’s not a core focus right now, but it can be a very important contributor as problems for women are the same the world over,” Deep said.
Funding and profitability
Femtech has become an important sector globally and has been drawing a lot of investor attention. Globally, it saw funding inflows of $1.2 billion in 2021; India saw close to $40 million in fund raises in 2021.
“Funding at a group level is not a challenge. It is a well-funded group. Any initiative that is strategic will find money and fuel business growth,” said Deep, adding that they are also on the lookout for complementary acquisitions such as nutrition or mental wellness.
In February 2022, Sirona acquired pepper spray maker Impower and forayed into the women’s safety space.
Even as the company is looking at aggressive expansion, the focus will be on bringing back profitability to the business.
“Last year, there was some burn because we grew fast. We would want to continuously keep the focus on our North Star, which has always been profitability. So you will see that come in,” said Deep, who expects Sirona to become PAT (Profit After Tax) positive by the end of FY23.
