Meet the man who bought his first car at 85 and other top SMB picks of the week
From an elderly couple starting a business that made sales worth Rs 13 crore in its first year to a healthtech company making insurance accessible to underserved MSMEs, here are the top SMB stories of the week.
‘Age is no bar’ and RK Choudhary shows this in style. At 85 years of age, RK, fondly known as Nanaji, bought his first car from the money he earned through the business he started along with his wife Shakuntala Choudhary and daughter Vinita Agarwal.
The couple and their daughter run , a personal care brand, which within a year has garnered sales worth Rs 13 crore. Nanaji now has big plans: he aims to take the brand to the nooks and corners of the world.
Other top stories of the week:
Onsurity
Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are the key contributors to the economic growth of our country. They contribute almost 30 percent to the country’s GDP and have created 111 million jobs, but they have limited access to employee benefits, including insurance.
For MSMEs, it is imperative to make their business shock-proof, and the health of their employees plays a major role here. But, in India, insurance penetration among MSMEs has been low due to a lack of designed plans for the sector, which is prone to financial crises.
Yogesh Agarwal and Kulin Shah came forward in 2020 to establish , a healthtech company focusing on the MSME and contractual workforce of large enterprises, giving them access to affordable and accessible healthcare benefits.
According to the company, it is one of the only healthtech companies in India providing a monthly membership model to SMEs, MSMEs, startups, and emerging businesses.
In an interaction with SMBStory, Yogesh says, “We aim to democratise healthcare and give all businesses, irrespective of their size and scale, a chance to ensure easy access to the best healthcare solutions for all employees.”
Yogesh says the lack of access to affordable plans has kept MSMEs away from availing health benefits for employees. Backing his statement, he says that since inception, Onsurity is growing 8X annually and 20-25 percent monthly.
Delta Exports
Rising disposable incomes coupled with access to social media have nudged Indians to splurge on perfumes. Banking on this trend is Delhi-based B2B company . After a successful export venture, the fragrance manufacturer took its business a notch higher in 2010 with a focus on the B2C market in India via brands such as The Fragrance People (TFP).
TFP manufactures and sells various fragrance products, offering 150 SKUs across categories such as incense sticks, essential oils, candles, roll-ons, and more. It has also added an anti-viral and anti-pollution collection—reed diffusers, candles, and essential oils—to expand its offerings.
According to the company, the anti-pollution oil blend contains 18 purifying essential oils with antimicrobial and cleansing properties. The products, Delta says, clean the air and function as natural air purifiers. These items were introduced after 2010.
The Indian fragrance products industry is slated to reach Rs 139 billion by 2024, registering a compound annual growth rate of 15.9 percent. India houses numerous brands such as Forest Essentials, Good Earth, Beauty MNL, and more, according to a report by ResearchandMarkets.
In an interview with SMBStory, Deepak and Arti Jain, Directors at Delta, decode the brand, how the diffusers category became its bestseller, and more.
Edited by Teja Lele