Intimate business: India-based Sanfe targeting ‘underserved’ feminine hygiene market in lower-tier cities

Sanfe is a direct-to-consumer brand from India that specialises in feminine hygiene, grooming and intimate care products. It was founded in 2018 by Archit Aggarwal and Harry Sehrawat.

The company has a recurring annual run rate of INR30cr (U$4m) and clocks in around 25% month-on-month growth.

Sanfe first made a name for itself with organic period care products and two years later, it delved into intimate skin care products.

Today, the intimate beauty space is the firm’s biggest growth driver, accounting for 40% to 45% of the entire business.

“I like to think we introduced intimate cosmetics to the Indian industry. Before, there were products for face and body, but there was no education about taking care of the intimate areas and women just didn’t think of taking care of those areas,”​ said Sehrawat.

The company invested heavily into campaigns to shed a light on the benefits of investing in intimate care products.

“There’s still not enough awareness in the market. Till today, we have only been able to break into the tier-one cities. There’s still a whole market in tier two and three cities,”​ said Sehrawat.

He told CosmeticsDesign-Asia​ that the company was working to expand its research into tier two and three cities. However, the challenge of educating consumers about feminine hygiene has proven to be a massive undertaking.

“For tier two and three cities, we are following a different strategy. We are not promoting our intimate cosmetics directly, instead, we are launching other products that those consumers are already familiar with, like period care and body grooming, to build belief in the brand.”​

The company believes that the intimate personal care segment will grow and include new categories of products in the future.

“That’s exactly what we envision. We want to be making lifetime products, not products you use once a week or once a month, but products you use daily – lifestyle products.”​

Today, Sanfe has around 50 to 60 intimate skin care products and currently has around 125 products under development.

Additionally, it is working to reduce the prices of its products.

“These products are not affordable to the masses since the ingredients that we are using makes them costly. But we should be able to reduce the prices for the consumers so that it can become a mass product rather than a premium product.”​

Beyond expanding across the country and working on products, the company is gearing up to enter the offline market in roughly a year’s time.

Sehrawat said the company was also exploring opportunities to expand the business internationally.

“Based on our research, we will surely be looking to entering South Asian countries like Nepal or Bangladesh. Apart from that, we are also looking into markets like the US.”​