Brands
Pee Safe wipes In $32 Mn as Orbimed bets big on women’s hygiene
MUMBAI: Breaking taboos has turned into big business for Pee Safe. The women’s hygiene and wellness brand has raised $32 million (around Rs 290 crore) in growth capital from global healthcare-focused private equity firm Orbimed, marking one of the larger recent bets in India’s consumer healthcare space.
The funding round includes a mix of primary capital and secondary share purchases from early investors. Pee Safe founded by Vikas Bagaria and Rithish Kumar, Pee Safe has quietly built scale while staying in the black, clocking over Rs 150 crore in annualised net revenue, a rarity in India’s consumer start-up ecosystem.
The brand, best known for its leadership in toilet hygiene and feminine hygiene products, has steadily expanded into personal care and wellness, serving millions of women across India and select global markets. The fresh capital will be channelled into widening its offline retail footprint, stepping up brand-led marketing, and accelerating growth across quick commerce platforms and leading online marketplaces.
According to the founders, profitability has remained non-negotiable even as the company scaled. That discipline, they say, made the business attractive to a healthcare specialist investor rather than a purely consumer-focused fund. On Orbimed’s side, the firm sees Pee Safe as a differentiated, trust-led brand operating in large, under-penetrated categories with repeat demand.
As part of the deal, Sunny Sharma and Sumona Chakraborty will join Pee Safe’s board, signalling Orbimed’s intent to play an active role in the next phase of growth.
With fresh capital, a profitable core, and ambitions that stretch well beyond niche hygiene products, Pee Safe now appears set to scrub up into one of India’s more credible consumer healthcare scale-ups proving that when it comes to wellness, clean thinking can also mean clean numbers.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
