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PR Playbook · D2C men's grooming and personal care
How Bombay Shaving Company built a category and an authentic founder
Bombay Shaving Company reframed shaving as a premium ritual rather than a blade and price fight, and made its founder its most valuable earned-media channel. Unfiltered founder storytelling plus category education let a challenger build trust it could never buy on the incumbent's terms.
Founded 2015 by Shantanu Deshpande and co-founders, Gurugram
How did Bombay Shaving Company take on a global grooming incumbent?
Bombay Shaving Company reframed shaving as a premium ritual rather than a blade and price fight, and made its founder its most valuable earned-media channel. Unfiltered founder storytelling plus category education let a challenger build trust it could never buy on the incumbent's terms.
- FY24 revenue, up 26%
- ₹204 Cr
- FY25 revenue run-rate
- ₹550 Cr+
- Nov 2025 funding round
- ₹136 Cr
FY24 revenue, up 26%
FY25 revenue run-rate
Nov 2025 funding round
Figures are the company's own reported numbers, drawn from the sources below.
The context
The problem to solve
Men's grooming in India was, for practical purposes, defined by a single global incumbent with decades of shelf presence and advertising weight.
A challenger faced a stark choice: fight for scraps in a cluttered razor market, or build a new category and own it. Bombay Shaving Company chose the latter, reframing a low-engagement act into a premium, ritualised experience, which is a communications and positioning decision before it is a product one.
The approach
How they earned attention
The brand's most distinctive asset is its founder-as-storyteller model. CEO Shantanu Deshpande built a large personal audience through unfiltered, authentic content, chronicling the genuinely hard journey of taking on a multinational rather than polished corporate messaging.
That founder platform sits on top of a category-education strategy: leading with the language of grooming ritual, self-care and premium experience rather than blades and prices, so the brand defines the space instead of reacting to it.
Product launches and calendar moments are built into media hooks, while the founder stays ready to comment on D2C, FMCG and startup building, converting reactive news into thought-leadership placements.
“If I'm able to put myself out there in an authentic way, it gives my consumer so much more.”
Shantanu Deshpande, Founder and CEO
The results
What it added up to
Revenue from operations rose 26 percent to ₹204 crore in FY24, while net loss narrowed 23 percent to ₹62.1 crore and EBITDA margin improved sharply.
By FY25 the company reported it had roughly doubled revenue to a run-rate of over ₹550 crore and turned PAT profitable. In November 2025 it closed a ₹136 crore round led by Sixth Sense Ventures and signalled IPO intent, showing how an authentic founder voice can build the trust that underwrites both loyalty and investor confidence.
The takeaway for communicators
What we take from it
When you cannot outspend the category leader, out-trust it. A founder willing to be authentically visible can become a brand's single most valuable earned-media channel.
Sources
Every figure and quotation above is drawn from these published sources.
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