Bombay Shaving Company Bags $6.5 Mn To Expand Presence

Men’s grooming startup Bombay Shaving Company has raised $6.3 Mn (INR 45 Cr) in a funding round led by domestic consumer-centric venture fund Sixth Sense Ventures.

Bombay Shaving Company’s existing investor Colgate Palmolive Asia Pacific also participated in the funding round. The investment comes with a successful exit for Bombay Shaving Company’s early employees and 30 angel investors, who got 6x returns on their investment within three and a half years (since 2016).

The ministry of corporate affairs filings highlight that the angel investors included 16 partners from McKinsey that includes Noshir Kaka and Gautam Kumra; former managing director of TCS Subramanian Ramadorai; former CEO of Tech Mahindra Kiran Deshpande; and Oyo strategy head Maninder Gulati.

Colgate Palmolive Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based consumer products company Colgate-Palmolive, came on board as a Bombay Shaving Company’s investors last year by acquiring a minority stake in the company. In addition, Bombay Shaving Company’s previous investor Fireside Ventures had also invested in the round, which was termed as Series A.

Prior to that, Bombay Shaving Company had raised $2.3 Mn Pre-Series A from Fireside Ventures in August 2017 and $600K in seed-stage funding round from more than 25 investors in August 2016. The former vice-chairman of TCS and advisor to the Prime Minister, Subramanian Ramadorai, and McKinsey India managing director Noshir Kaka had led the seed round. The company has raised close to $11.2 Mn across funding rounds.

Founded in October 2015 by Shantanu Deshpande, Raunak Munot, Deepu Panicker, and Rohit Jaiswal, Bombay Shaving Company was officially launched in May 2016. The men’s grooming company designs and sells high-end shaving products. It’s portfolio lists 30 products across the shaving, bath and body, skin, and beard care categories.

As of August 2018, Bombay Shaving Company had marked its impression on more than 80K customers and 500 offline stores. With the latest investment, the company wants to expand its omnichannel brand even further to target 3,000 stores to 10,000 stores in the coming months.

Men’s grooming section is considered as a fast-growing category in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) space in India with growth rates estimated at 30% annually. Ecommerce companies such as Flipkart, Amazon India, Nykaa, and Purplle are some of platform that sell male grooming products online.

Besides mainstream players like Emami and Gillette, other players in the men’s grooming section include Happily Unmarried, The Man Company and Beardo. Moreover, even Amazon tied up with Hindustan Unilever to co-develop a line of hair and men grooming products, last year.