Male grooming brand Bombay Shaving Company has raised Rs 45 crore ($6.2 million) in a funding round led by consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser.
The round saw participation from individuals including Avaana Capital founder Anjali Bansal and CleanMax Energy managing director Kuldeep Jain.
Arjun Purkayastha, Reckitt Benckiser’s senior vice-president of ecommerce, digital, and ventures, will join the board of the firm running the brand.
The brand’s owner, Visage Lines Personal Care Pvt Ltd, will mainly use the capital for expanding rapidly in offline retail distribution as post-Covid footfall rises.
“As we build omnichannel revenue streams, we are cognisant that brands will be scaled through strong digital and retail distribution,” said Shantanu Deshpande, founder of Bombay Shaving Company.
Deshpande, a former McKinsey & Co consultant, had launched Bombay Shaving Company in June 2016. The company now has more than 100 products across shaving, bath and body, skin, and beard care categories.
This will be the fifth round of financing for the company that has been backed by investors such as Sixth Sense Ventures and Colgate-Palmolive. In 2019, the firm had created exits worth Rs 20 crore for early angels and employees.
There have been a couple of deals in the grooming products segment in the recent past. In July last year, Marico Ltd, the maker of Parachute hair oil and Saffola cooking oil, bought the 55% stake it didn’t already own in Zed Lifestyle Pvt. Ltd, which runs male grooming brand Beardo.
Early last year, Wipro Consumer Care, a unit of Wipro Enterprises Pvt. Ltd, invested in Chandigarh-based male grooming startup LetsShave Pvt. Ltd.
In 2017, fast-moving consumer goods major Emami Ltd entered the men’s grooming product space by picking up a 30% stake in The Man Company.
