How Sirona Hygiene is Tapping into the Growing Femtech Market

For Sirona Hygiene, the journey to identifying feminine intimate hygiene issues started on a road trip Deep Bajaj, CEO and Co-Founder of Sirona Hygiene had taken in 2013. On noticing his wife and friends’ encounters with dirty toilets, the idea of PeeBuddy - India’s 1st female urination device that enables women to stand and pee in unfriendly toilets - was born. 

He also noticed that existing solutions like hot water bottles and pain killers for period pain were either cumbersome or had side effects. Thus, the brand came up with India’s 1st feminine pain relief patch. 

“The further we explored the territories of feminine hygiene the more problems we unearthed. And soon I realized there were several unspoken or hushed problems women 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 sterilizer, menstrual cup wash, natural anti-chafing cream, rash-free black pads, oxo-biodegradable disposal bags and many more,” says Deep Bajaj, CEO, and Co-Founder, Sirona Hygiene.

Sirona is committed to an exclusive objective, i.e. creating products and driving conversations around feminine hygiene problems. The brand is solving unaddressed problems from puberty to menopause. Its current product range offers solutions for period flow, period care, hair removal, toilet and travel hygiene, intimate and sexual care, pregnancy, and other stages of a woman’s life. 

“Sirona is a feedback-first company and thus listens to its customers and makes products that solve their pressing needs. Here, ‘customer need’ takes precedence over ‘opportunity size’. If our customers need a solution, we go after the problem and come up with a unique and relevant solution. At the development stage, we try our best to ensure the product is good for her (ingredient-wise) and for the environment,” states Bajaj.

“Another thing that sets us apart is our commitment to even those customers who can’t buy our products but need them. We donate Rs 1 from every Sirona and PeeBuddy product sold towards the initiatives to improve the menstrual health and hygiene of underprivileged young girls and women in India,” he adds.

Omnichannel: The Way Forward

In a time when numerous players are entering the industry, Sirona Hygiene is leveraging multiple channels of communication to reach its target audience – social media, e-commerce platforms, newspapers, own website, collaborations, and more. Being a feedback-first company and a team that stands for solving unaddressed problems, it is identifying feminine intimate hygiene issues and stimulating dialogue around them, using content marketing and community building. 
  
“We are in the nascent stage of developing an omnichannel strategy. Being a customer-oriented company, we aim at making the customer experience seamless on all fronts. With a strong online presence, we are working on offering a smooth customer experience by leveraging multiple social media platforms, e-commerce websites, our own website, customer service, and more,” Bajaj explains.

Marrying Technology with the Brand

Behind the innovation of many of its India-1st products, technology has played an important role. 

“To solve feminine intimate hygiene problems efficiently, we conduct rigorous R&D before launching a product. We work with different natural ingredients to make new formulations, to offer products that effectively solve intimate and period hygiene problems. We are thus tapping into the growing Femtech market to meet the requirements of the modern woman,” he states.
 
Future Plans

Sirona has been growing 100 percent year-on-year for the last 3 years. The company is being built on customer revenues. While it has raised two angel rounds, the focus is to build a customer-funding dependent business and to ensure it walks the talk, it pays a lot of attention to unit economics. 

“Due to this philosophy – introduced by Mohit Bajaj (Co-founder), we have been PAT positive for the past 3 years. Earlier this year, we raised US$ 3 million in series A funding primarily to boost our marketing initiatives and reach out to more and more customers with our innovative offerings,” asserts Bajaj.

“We are also working on strengthening our foothold in the Indian and global market. We will soon start working towards the next round of funding,” he adds. 

With the response, the company has received from its customers, it is growing its portfolio, expanding its team, and making all efforts to improve the customer experience. 

“We are penetrating into Tier-II cities, reaching out to potential customers in different parts of the country. With our offerings, we are doing it all to effectively solve unaddressed problems that women face from puberty to menopause,” he concludes.