LetsShave Bags Funding From Wipro, Dorco To Build Retail Presence

Chandigarh-based grooming startup LetsShave has raised an undisclosed amount of fresh funding. Talking to Inc42, LetsShave founder and CEO Sidharth Oberoi said that Wipro Consumer Care has acquired a minority stake in LetsShave and signed an agreement to invest in the company.

Further, existing investor Dorco has invested in the round to increase its stake to 15%. LetsShave will use the funding to expand its shaving and personal care product portfolio, bolster its online presence by growing the revenue by at least 3X and leverage Wipro’s touchpoints to expand into the offline market.

Prior to this, in 2018, LetsShave raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Korean razor manufacturer Dorco Ltd against a 10% stake.

LetsShave: Expanding Portfolio And More

Founded in 2015 by Oberoi, LetsShave started off as a brand catering to men’s grooming products, but today it caters to both men and women with more than twenty grooming products which include — shaving kits, trial kits, blades, shaving foams, scrubs, shaving brushes and exclusive products such as 6-blade razor with trimmers.

The startup offers subscription-based shaving products where consumers order a complete shaving kit with razors online and get it delivered at their doorsteps. In addition, consumers receive a reminder via SMS and emails about changing the blades every month. Based on these reminders, they order again or order in advance for the next few months to get a regular supply of blades without having to physically go visit a store.

“They are a promising team and have the ability to understand consumer requirements, identify opportunities, and meet them in quick cycle time. This investment is in keeping with the company’s strategy of leveraging emerging online opportunities addressed towards the millennial population,” said Sumit Keshan, managing partner, Wipro Consumer – Venture.

The company said it has a user base of over a half-million customers with a promising repeat rate of over 40% and serves more than 18Kpin codes in India. It has recently entered into the shower, body care, beard products, and electric trimmers categories.

LetsShave follows a direct-to-consumer online sales model and has a repeat customer rate of more than 40% with approximately 90% of the sales generated from LetsShave’s own platform, while 10% from other sources.

Asawari Pawar, CMO, LetsShave said, “In the women’s shaving market, we have grown a lot faster than we initially thought, so we also plan to expand our women’s product portfolio under the brand LetsShave ‘Evior’ in an effort to continue to drive growth overall.”

Ken Kwak, managing director of Dorco, said, “The powerful combination of our high-quality products and LetsShave’s passionate team, digital marketing expertise, technical capabilities with Wipro’s deep knowledge and experience in the Indian market will help us to further reach the millennial population and together we’ll be able to create LetsShave an even stronger brand for Indian consumers.”

Grooming Industry

In the booming wide array of beauty and care products of women, men’s grooming had remained indigenous to next door hair-dresser and kirana store oil-shave etc purchases.

However, from the past few years, with increasing offline turning online process, men’s grooming became a new online range of products with products like hair wax, beard wax, beard essence etc becoming the next-gen choice.

Catering to this shift, the players like LetsShave have their eyes set on shaving, which according to Euromonitor holds the largest market share in the grooming category with more than 42%.

While big names like Gillette are dominating the market not just with their products but also their ideology, the model of LetsShave and the ‘one for all approach’ gives the company an edge.  According to a 2018 ASSOCHAM report, the men’s grooming market in India has been growing at a CAGR of about 45%. Currently, at INR 16,800 Cr in India, it is expected to touch INR 35K Cr in the next three years.

The global male grooming products market touched a value of $60.6 Bn in 2018 and is further expected to reach $81.2 Bn by 2024 at a CAGR of 5% during 2019-2024, displaying a great potential especially in the huge Indian market.