Meet the man revolutionising the feminine hygiene category in India

Adgully has been turning the spotlight on the entrepreneurs who fought against all odds to bring their dreams to fruition in our special series – START-UP STARS. We at Adgully wholeheartedly support the ‘Vocal for Local’ movement and have been featuring numerous local/ homegrown businesses, brands, and Apps in the country launched in the last few years.

Sironais a one-stop store for all feminine hygiene and sanitary products. It provides an overall solution for all ignored and unaddressed feminine hygiene woes and wellness-related problems. The shelf of Sirona that starts from the price range of Rs 75 includes products like herbal feminine pain relief patches, oxo-degradable disposal bags, tampons and reusable menstrual cups, and pantyliners, among others. Sirona also claims to be the first brand to have introduced maternity breast pads, herbal pain relief patches, underarm sweat pads and anti-chafing cream in India.

In conversation with Adgully, Deep Bajaj, CEO, Sirona, shares his journey as an entrepreneur and the Sirona ecosystem. He also talks about his key insights and takes on the upcoming trends for 2023 and how the company became the top-notch brand in the industry of Feminine Hygiene.

Please take us through your journey as an entrepreneur. What motivated you to establish Sirona?

I am a B.com graduate from Delhi University and a marketing postgraduate from Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. My professional experience spans over 14 years. I started my entrepreneurial journey with events and advertising at Thyme Advertising as Partner & Director. Later, I ventured into handmade carpets business with my wife, as a part of an award-winning team at Carpet Couture by Rashi, a brand offering carpets for high-end hotels and residences.

Leveraging my key strengths like relationship management, strategic planning, and marketing, I executed luxury projects across the globe as a part of ‘Carpet Couture’.

Being a keen observer of troubling feminine issues and witnessing the lack of solutions for toilet hygiene issues that vulva owners face on a daily basis I launched PeeBuddy in 2015 and later Sirona. The company has since then been disrupting the face of feminine hygiene space in the country with problem-solving products like PeeBuddy, India’s First female urination device (Stand & Pee) followed by SIRONA menstrual cups, sanitary disposal bags, and many more products.

It all started on a road trip in 2013. We were four couples traveling in a car, and men drank all they wanted to but women did not touch water. They were thinking what if there were no clean toilets on the way.

On noticing my wife and her friends’ encounters with dirty toilets, the idea of PeeBuddy, India’s 1st Female Urination Device that enables vulva owners to stand and pee in unfriendly toilets, was born. Likewise, when I realised that for period cramps, using hot water bottles and pain killers was either cumbersome or had side effects. Thus, we came up with India’s 1st Feminine Pain Relief Patches.

The further we explored the territories of feminine hygiene, the more problems we unearthed. And soon I knew there were several unspoken or hushed problems vulva owners had been facing that needed to be solved. Since then, we have offered a number of innovative and India-first products for feminine hygiene, for example, Menstrual Cup Steriliser, Menstrual Cup Wash, Natural Anti-Chafing Cream, Rash-free Black Pads, Oxo-Bioddegradble Disposal bags, PeeBuddy Female Urination Device, and many more.

What was the need of Sirona via a consumer's perspective? What is the core business proposition?

Dirty toilets, period rashes and leakage, sanitary disposal, swimming, traveling and exercising during periods, and many more such problems are real life issues that vulva owners face on a daily basis and have been doing so for many years. They have learnt to live with these problems.

With this situation in the period and intimate hygiene category Sirona wants to make a real difference in their life by taking away period and intimate hygiene related woes. Plan is to become the go to place, like a friend - when it comes to her such needs. The category has not evolved despite the introduction of 10+ products that should have been launched decades ago (period pain, rashes, stain removers, etc) but no one looked beyond pads. We want to disrupt this ideology, and that's the strategy. All industries have changed, and the feminine hygiene category is awaiting a revolution of its own, whether through tech or with products or content. We, at Sirona, are committed to the fact that nothing should make vulva owner compromise on their hygiene. Hence, with this approach, we are rigorously solving vulva owner’s unaddressed problems faced from puberty to menopause and are trying to cover them all. We aim to reach more vulva owners for instigating comfortable, sustainable change and are collaborating with universities and corporates to drive this through education, awareness and access. We already have a million menstruators on Sirona menstrual cup.

But our soul is to solve menstruation for the period poverished as well. Through our Laakhon Khwahishein initiative, our CSR arm - the Sirona Hygiene Foundation aims to Cupvert one lakh women in rural areas and urban slums, jail inmates and menstruators who have been ignored or sidelined financially and socially.

What were your key learnings so far? How do you see the Sirona ecosystem progressing in 2023?

Here are some of my key learnings:

Keep customers at the center
Stay true to your team
Empower people in the team to take on roles that they can lead end to end
Everything can be sold. It. A market exists for very product but as long as you are willing to hustle you can sell it.
Persistence is one of the biggest virtues that you can build in yourself and your team

We are here to disrupt the femtech space. We have not even scratched the surface. From 2023 till 2025, you will see far more disruption being created from Sirona in the category when it comes to technology or the products. It’s far more exciting, now that there are newer players in the category who keep us on our feet. We are also getting more insights from the consumers to solve problems for them.

How is digital helping you further your business?

Digital has a major role to play in lead generation. People are consuming content on various platforms; all content pieces might not directly lead to sales, however, it does help build recall value that further leads to a transaction. Sirona is creating content across platforms – Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Intimately Yours blog, The Sirona App, The Sirona Community and so on.

It’s true that social media trends are constantly evolving and being discarded, however, these emerging trends help bring forward new and creative content for the audience. We believe that the shelf-life of a campaign is based on the brand intent & objective and not the current trends only. To give an example, Sirona has recently launched the second leg of a campaign called ‘#DaughterIndia’ which focuses on bringing about a change in how people look at our country. We generally take our mothers for granted, however, we treat our daughters with love and care. The campaign is focussed on driving people to change their perspective and start treating their country as their daughter. Changing perspective takes communication, engagement over a period of time to show results. Thus for this campaign, we are not time, platform or channel bound and will continue to work on it for a long time.

How did you identify your TG? Did you carry out any feasibility study prior to starting your business?

Problems related to period, intimate and toilet hygiene are faced by all vulva owners. So, for us we every vulva owner is our TG and we are here to solve all unaddressed problems they face in this category from puberty to menopause. At the development stage, we conduct multiple tests and trials to ensure that the product is good for our customers in terms of both the ingredients and performance. While vulva owners in urban India comprise the company’s primary target audience yet we are equally committed to the hygiene of women in rural India through the Sirona Hygiene Foundation.

What were the challenges that you faced in your startup journey and how did you overcome them?

At the work level, fighting the taboo in this category was a big challenge for me, however on a personal level, staying positive and keeping my head above water is what I practiced to keep myself going.

The taboos and perceptions around feminine intimate hygiene created more obstacles for us initially. To dig the taboo it was fairly simple - we kept talking about these issues across channels. Soon we realised that it is not the need of the product that doesn’t exist, but customers are not aware that their problems can be solved with suitable solutions. They have trained themselves to live with these problems as they are not spoken about openly.. So, we took the bull by its horn, participated in events, marathons, and concerts, and encouraged influencers to talk about intimate hygiene and health soon we started to see the consumer's perception change, and the consumer now slowly opening up to try new products.

On a personal level, I think, it was about practicing a few things that I already knew. I knew about a thousand days to create any business and gave myself that time. I do practice keeping myself away from energy vampires to be more positive.

What would be your message for budding entrepreneurs?

Rome wasn’t built in a day. If it is a new startoup, you must give it time and be at it, if you are at it, you will crack it. Stay positive and stay away from energy vampires.