Nirmalaya Strives to Offer Sustainable Fragrances: Bharat Bansal, CEO & Co-Founder
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A CA dropout, Lawyer by profession, and entrepreneur by heart, Bharat Bansal, CEO & Co-Founder, Nirmalaya, has worked a lot with startups in building his last company profitably from 0 to a team of 30+ people. He was always passionate about starting something of his own and he started BanBros consulting where he was working super closely with founders in their financial decision-making and acting as Virtual CFO. This led to his introduction to the ecosystem. He is a people person who loves to strategies and builds relationships. In an interview with EduKida, Bansal, talks about market and Nirmalaya as a brand and its journey
How did you get the idea to start Nirmalaya?
We saw the process of conversion of flowers to incense in Shirdi Temple and on enquiry we came to know the process. Since we are living in Delhi for more than 30 years and have seen Yamuna getting polluted to an untreatable extent. Also, we come from religious backgrounds and our religious sentiments are hurt whenever we see offered flowers dumped into garbage or landfills. So this encouraged us to start Nirmalaya.
The brand has recently received funding, how are you going around allotting that fund in different segments?
We are looking at allocation the funds to expand the business in a big way + getting a corporate structure and process to the Nirmalaya Ecosystem. Major portion of funds will be spent on branding and marketing. Another decent percentage of funds would be allocated to hiring the right staff to take the brand and sales forward / increased retail presence and strong online delivery systems and processes.
How difficult is it to understand and enter the market, which already has established players in the same business?
I would say It is quite difficult but we are focusing on core story of Nirmalaya which is aimed at pure fragrances keeping sustainability in mind, which would enable more and more customers to get attracted to the brand. We are also looking at building a robust distribution network to increase our footprints. Our main motive is to educate the customer that they can also contribute in reducing pollution / wastage and contribute to the society – with all these factors playing an important part our entry with established players would be better rather than competing on price directly with them.
How do you see the growth and outlook that the industry promises within the Indian market?
The market is growing many folds specially because of growth in wellness category. People are becoming more and more conscious about wellness, environment and sustainability, and they want to contribute to the environment in some way or the other. The market is growing rapidly and becoming organized. There is growth in disposable income of the customer in turn allowing him to buy good quality products irrespective of price, which is a positive point for a brand like us.
Tell us about the expansion and hiring plans of Nirmalaya to stay on top of its competitors. How does the brand support rural women?
As a brand, our theory is simple. The more we will sell, the more we will generate employment, recycle more flowers and scale up. We are looking big time on exports and also the offline channels of marketing. By the end of Q1 of FY 2023-24, we plan to be present across 300+ stores in Delhi/NCR and other cities. 80% of our workforce is rural women and we intend to go into direction of hiring more as we go ahead. 6. How is Nirmalaya working on the ‘waste to wellness’ approach? Ans: We are a company based on the model of circular economy. We have derived a value out of floral waste and intend to continue doing this in future and are known today for our fragrances. Major cohort of our customer is the one purchasing our products for aromatherapy. If we talk about wellness, there are 7 types of wellness and Nirmalaya very well focuses on 3 out of them i.e. environmental, spiritual and emotional. So with recycling floral waste, we focus on wellness to curate our products.
As most companies are focusing on sustainability, what your brand is doing to achieve sustainable goals?
Our concept of recycling of flowers into waste is based on the model of circular economy. Circular economy is a very important concept as far as sustainability is concerned. For us, sustainability lies at the center point of environment, society and economy put together. We first want to be economically sustainable and simultaneously focusing on environment and society cz we intend to do this for life and if we will not be financially sustainable, we’ll not be able to do this for long. So we intend to grow in sales, recycle more flowers and employ more women from underprivileged sector simultaneously fulfilling all the 3 aspect of sustainability.
What are your revenue projections for FY 22-23?
We will close FY 2022-23 with a growth at 300%. We closed last FY at 2.6 crores
