We’re outspoken, loud, and bold: Siddha Jain on brand Bombae

Launched in Q3 2020, Bombay Shaving Company Women, now Bombae, is an extension of the Bombay Shaving Company, specifically catering to women’s grooming needs. The brand has made significant progress in a short time, positioning itself as a challenger to established brands in the personal care, hygiene, and hair removal space in India.

Bombae has garnered investments from various sources, including individual investors (angels), as well as well-known companies such as Colgate Palmolive, Reckitt, and Sixth Sense Ventures.

In conversation with Adgully, Siddha Jain, Chief Business Officer, Bombay Shaving Company Women, speaks about the brand’s inception, positioning of a ‘True-to-Women’ brand, marketing strategies, targeted growth in revenue terms, being a leader in the hair removal space, campaign strategy, and more.

Please share about ‘Bombae’. How has the brand’s journey been so far?

We are a brand made by women, reimagining hair removal for women. Our offerings are rooted in their realities and their needs. So, while we understand why they’d want to remove their hair, we also recognise that it’s their choice. We celebrate our consumers for who they are and talk to them like we know them. We’re outspoken, loud, bold, and aren’t afraid to tell women’s stories about how they should be told. The brand started only one and a half years back, (3-6 months back as Bombae) and has become 20%+ of the overall company turnover. We continue to receive lots of love from our consumers & high repeat rates on our top products.

Bombay Shaving Company has ventured into the female segment as well with Bombae. What is the demand like in this segment?

Our approach towards curating the portfolio is providing elevated DIY offerings that are sizable, solve a real consumer need, and have longevity in her eyes. We keep a close ear to all emerging trends and test them against these criteria, while also doing a forward-back exercise of creating game-changing solutions. So, our current portfolio has offerings across:

Facial hair: Face & eyebrow razors (including biodegradable options), Facial hair trimmer
Body hair: Body razors (disposable, cartridge and bikini razor variants), Hair removal creams (variants made with shea butter and aloe vera), wax strips (variants for different skin types), Trimmer for underarm and bikini areas
Hair removal ritual: Pre- & post-shave gel, shaving foams
Hygiene: Menstrual cup (ring and step variants), sterilizer, intimate wash

As the CBO of the brand, what are the upcoming expansions and new launches that have been planned by you?

We are very excited about some super interesting innovations in the hair removal category – from razors to hair removal creams – and expect to see a lot of game-changing products.

India is known for its festivities. What can you say about the festive trends? Has there been an increase in sales?

The festive season around August and November is buzzing with new launches, collaborations, and campaigns. We have observed exponential growth during festive months compared to other months on both e-commerce and offline front. Consumers are keen to shop for themselves, their family and friends. We are very excited about the new launches in our face and body razor portfolio that have happened around the period, this year- as it has the potential to establish Bombae as the challenger brand.

Please share about the key campaigns and how they are helping you to reach your target audience.

Our newest campaign on Glamup beauty face razors is picking up a lot of steam. It builds an interesting narrative on how to get glass-like Korean skin [which is all one wants right now] by using Bombae’s beauty face razor. From a campaign creation point of view, we have stayed true to the promise of being bold, honest and irreverent in everything we do. Our aesthetic is an extension of our identity so we keep it 100% real. Real hair, real bodies, real results, real skin, we’re not afraid to bare it all. Unlike other brands it shows smooth skin before and after hair removal. Our recent campaign on our Fuzzoff trimmer was not permitted to be run on certain platforms on account of showing real body hair like never before.

We have a very objective focused approach to campaign conceptualization. Depending on each objective and target audience, we go deep into the pulse of the consumer (especially for product/ category education) to develop our messaging and choice of media.

Objectives are threefold:

Educating the consumer against archaic myths when it comes to hair removal products
Building memorability and equity for our brand
Conveying the value proposition & product superiority to the consumer

How was the last quarter of 2023?

We already are a Rs 50 crore ARR brand and plan to become a Rs 100 crore ARR brand by June 2024 and Rs 500 crore brand by 2025.

Earlier, there was this perception that body hair removal via creams is not good. How is Bombae breaking this archaic myth?

Lots and lots of education in every form of communication from packaging to campaigns to how our beauty advisors speak has been pivotal to addressing myths. The perceived side effects in the category (ex. re-growth, makes hair coarse, skin darkening, etc.) are as long-standing in India as the belief that the earth was flat. Even though there is one half of the world that’s happily adapting DIY hair removal methods, every other day and we are okay to emulate the West in a bunch of things but not this. We want to break this hypocrisy. The fact that no experience matches that of a salon/ parlour didi is a myth perpetrated by the stellar influencer that is the parlour wali didi.

Where do you see Bombae in 10 years? What are the future plans?

Our ambition is simple: When a consumer thinks hair removal, they think Bombae, so much so that Bombae becomes a verb when it comes to hair removal. That itself is our niche. There isn’t any brand that owns this space end-to-end like we do. While the case for each product is different, the overall case of the brand is to harness the power of our innovation to continuously craft expert and thoughtful hair removal solutions, crafted for women by women.