How this D2C startup is helping find solutions to men’s wellness and sexual health problems

Rajat Jadhav and Rahul Krishnan started an e-pharmacy company back in 2015 to focus on healthcare. While it was one of the earliest startups in the space, they were not able to scale up the platform. However, they made a few interesting findings while running the company. The co-founders realised that 25 percent of their customers were ordering sexual health products on the platform. 

This led them to start Bold Care along with their childhood friends Mohit Yadav and Harsh Singh in July 2020.

The Mumbai-based health and wellness startup addresses men’s health issues such as sexual health, hair care, and daily nutrition. While the company was established in October 2019, the platform was officially launched in 2020.

“We saw the need for specialised healthcare D2C solutions for problems that are largely disorganised and ignored by the legacy market. Bold Care has come together through our learnings and intent to create a positive change in the largely untapped space of men’s sexual wellness,” says Rajat during an interaction with YourStory.

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What it solves for?

Rajat says, “Solutions to men’s health problems like erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation or even hair loss have been largely disorganised and serviced by quacks and unani practitioners where the users get a hush-hush solution that never works.”

That being said, the problem itself is faced by more than 100 million men in India, and that is a conservative estimate - in fact, this number is 3X the total diabetes patients in India. 

“Even with such a huge population facing these issues, the problem is mostly treated as a 'punchline' to a joke in the zeitgeist,” he adds.

Users on the platform can find highly effective, quick action solutions for problems like erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, etc., as well as science-backed solutions for hair loss problems, claims Rajat. 

Along with this, the startup provides free consultation and also a Bold Care private assistant to make the experience seamless and confusion-free for its users. 

“We want to move away from products that are expensive and don’t work, to authentic and affordable science backed solutions along with access to experts. The consultations are with curated experts who come with 10+ years’ of experience. These are provided free of cost to the customers.

"Every user is provided a private assistant too, to help them with any queries, free follow-up consultations, re-fills or just provide the safe space for our users to open up for the first time about these personal issues,” says Rajat.

This entire journey is provided from the comfort of their homes, discreetly and quickly. On an average, the startup takes a day and a half for pan-India delivery of its products. Along with this, special care is taken with the packaging as well to make sure the product stays anonymous.

“We stay away from the legacy approach of overly sexualised language and imagery to a clean and conscious approach that makes our users feel comfortable and safe when using our products,” highlights Rajat.

The team

Having been friends for over 14 years, Rajat, Mohit, Rahul, and Harsh were always in touch, and often bounced startup ideas on each other with the vision of starting up one day.

Prior to Bold Care, Rajat worked with growX ventures and also worked at his own e-pharmacy venture. Mohit, a BITS Pilani graduate, worked at Jio as a Deep Learning engineer. Rahul had worked with Freshworks while Harsh had previously worked as a full stack developer at Ingram Micro. 

With a team of 26 members, Rahul (CMO) heads the marketing team, Harsh (COO) handles operations and finance, Mohit (CTO) handles tech, and Rajat (CEO) plays a key role in strategy, growth, and execution.

Rajat highlights, “While we’re still a small team, everything from product development, marketing, operations, graphics and so on, are all managed in-house to make sure our user data is not shared with third party agencies.”

Early traction and product line

With 20 SKU across three verticals, sexual wellness, hair care, and daily nutrition, the startup claims to be completing 900-1,000 orders daily across platforms.

Apart from its own website, the products are available on popular ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, CRED, as well as e-pharmacies.

With products prices ranging in the Rs 350-750 range, the startup's bestselling product across the board is its' ‘All-round Endurance Pack’ for Premature Ejaculation, followed by the Erectile Dysfunction combo kit.

“From servicing 100 customers in July 2020, we have had a fast-paced growth journey in the last 18 months, scaling to 25,000+ monthly users as of January 2022,” states Rajat. 

With an overall customer base of more than 250,000 users, the startup claims to have witnessed 18 percent month-on-month growth over the last six months. In terms of net run rate, Bold Care has already crossed the Rs 1 crore MRR mark (in less than 18 months) and expects to keep the growth rate high through the year.

Market overview and revenue

Sexual health and hair care are some of the billion-dollar categories in India, with close to 100 million men facing these issues. In fact, India is called the ‘Impotence Capital of the World’. 

Rajat says, “For us, opportunities are immense. We envision Bold Care to be the go-to brand for all men’s health problems in the next three years. We have a unique model where we combine free access to best-in-class experts, holistic product offering (allopathic and natural), and private assistants to make stigma based problems simple.”

In just 18 months, the startup, which competes with Man Matters and Misters,  generated a revenue of Rs 2.24 crore in FY21, and is on track to generate over Rs 9 crore in FY22.

“The quick traction is a testament to the fact that we are solving a real problem that millions of Indian men are facing, and to the fact that Bold Care has a product-market fit,” he says.

Funding and way ahead

The startup is backed by Gurugram-based incubator Huddle, which has been advising Bold Care since its launch as part of Huddle’s diverse portfolio and tailor-made support functions to help grow promising startups.

The startup has raised a total $3 million in funding in the last 20 months. The latest round was a pre-Series A round in January 2022.  

“We have an aggressive growth plan for the year, with an aim to see over Rs 35 crore revenue in FY23,” says Rajat.