‘Blue ocean strategy’: Botnal set to launch 50 products in two years to fill the gaps in Indian skin care market

Botnal was created by Hemangi Dhir, who prior to this was working in corporate finance. The brand launched in April with eight products after two years in development.

Speaking to CosmeticsDesign-Asia,​ Dhir said the brand is set to launch another nine more products by the start of June.

“My plan is to have a launch every quarter with about eight to 10 products. By the end of two years, I would have about 50 products. I also plan to introduce new products for children and babies.​

Dhir acknowledged that the Indian skin care market is currently very saturated. However, she believes it is filled with “more of the same”​ products and the company is aiming to develop and introduce new products into the market.

“Yes, the market is very saturated, but it’s saturated with the same product. Right now, it's serums – it seems like every brand has more than one serum. My approach is all about the blue ocean strategy and I’m trying to fill all the gaps. I may have launched with eight products, but they are all quite niche.”​

She elaborated that the products that she launched include essence, cleansing butter and neck cream – products she claimed were not as easily found in the local market.

Dhir believes the brand is playing catch up with the market at the moment, which accelerated rapidly​ in the past couple of years.

“I feel like I’ve come in at a time where I could have launched a year ago and captured more of the market. Near the beginning of the pandemic, we saw a lot of people learning more about skin care and the market really accelerated. We’ve seen a number of companies that launched in the latter half of 2019 that have become very successful at this point.”​

On the other hand, she noted the brand has an opportunity to tap into the rising demand for clean beauty products.

“In particular, the clean beauty and wellness industry still has a lot of growth potential. So yes, it’s still a good time for us. I think the growth [of skin care] is going to continue until 2030 so we still have eight years in the space to really take it forward.”​

Improving circularity

In addition to developing new products, the company is working to improve the circularity of its business.

Dhir told us that this was a complex problem that the firm is slowly working towards, beginning with using biodegradable ingredients and recyclable packaging materials like glass.

She added that the next step would be to explore paper packaging materials and the goal was to have 100% biodegradable packaging. Another area the company is exploring is upcycled ingredients from the food industry.

“This is what we’re moving towards and its very tough mainly because its expensive. For the Indian market, the average price per person is not more than 500 to 600 rupees a product. Keeping that is a challenge.”​