Top SMB stories this week: meet the the companies disrupting the toy, FMCG, and healthcare segments
Passion goes hand in hand with entrepreneurship. Read how these three entrepreneurs, driven by the dedication to disrupt, are carving a niche in three sectors.
According to a report by Invest India, the Indian toy market, which is currently pegged at $1.5 billion, has the potential to double up and reach between $2-$3 billion by 2024.
India’s market share in the global market is only 0.5 percent, indicating a massive opportunity to leverage change and grow.
Against this backdrop, two friends Aadesh Rohilla and Rohit Sharma decided to venture into this market. Aadesh and Rohit, friends since their days at the YMCA Institute of Engineering, went separate ways thereafter but came together in 2010 to explore entrepreneurial options.
“We both always wanted to do something of our own.”
Aadesh quit his job in 2010 and decided to take distributorship of toy brands in early 2011 under Strings Marketing Private Limited. He was joined by Rohit the same year. The first company which came on board was New Jersey-based Alex Toys.
After 2014, Aadesh says they were able to add other prominent toy players like Melissa and Doug, Townley Girl, Buzz Bee, and more, supplying their goods pan-India including to Hamleys. However, while business was scaling up, the government was tightening the noose around imports.
Over the years, GST, increased custom duties, sample testing of toy consignments to filter out the import of cheap toys, and other measures have been undertaken by the government to reduce import dependence.
Feeling the pinch of these developments and realising the potential impact of the measures on their business, Aadesh and Rohit decided to start their own toy manufacturing and selling company, , in 2018.
Both the co-founders invested Rs 50 lakh each to kickstart initial operations of the business.
The company which began with just the two co-founders today employs 300 people, has a network of 50 distributors, and is present in 2,500 outlets.
Its biggest market is Maharashtra followed by Delhi. The products are also available in Chennai, Bangalore, and in Tier II cities such as Rudrapar, Guwahati, and Lucknow. In addition, Mirada is also an OEM for nine Indian and international toy brands.
Brillare Science
Ahmedabad-based Jigar Patel was heading his father’s pharmaceutical business since 2008. His formulations had already won him 21 patents before he started scouting for other opportunities because he realised he wanted to do something different.
Jigar, a pharmacist, was struck by three things about the personal care industry: the speed at which it was innovating, its scope of growth, and his love for formulation.
These factors compelled Jigar to start a personal care brand, Brillare Science Private Limited, in 2010 in Ahmedabad. He employed five people for its R&D unit and began by manufacturing and selling 18 products including moisturisers, shampoos, creams, and more to salons across India.
Today, has scaled up considerably. Apart from tying up with 10,000 beauty salons, it is also selling through , , , and its own website. In March 2021, legacy FMCG brand Emami infused Rs 50 lakh in a bid to help the company ramp up its offline presence.
In an interaction with SMBStory, Jigar decodes the journey of the brand and how it plans to move ahead in this highly competitive market.
Porvoo Transition Care
When Dr Sudhanshu Tyagi, MD, PHD in Nephrology and Founder of , saw an acute lack of adequate transition care in India, he set out to solve the problem himself.
Also the Managing Director of B. Braun Avitum, Russia, a German medical and pharmaceutical company, Sudhanshu tells SMBStory,
“My mother was admitted to a hospital due to a neurological disorder for three months. After the discharge, the consultant advised us to take her home as there was no further active intervention that could be performed. We sought out the help of a homecare provider and set up an ICU at home but it caused many troubles later.”
From lack of continuity of care to emergency assistance, emotional and financial stress and more, a lot is needed when a critically-ill patient is brought back home. It is the family that struggles the most even as the patient goes through a lot of trauma.
Having stayed in Europe for a majority of his life, Dr Sudhanshu was aware of transition care facilities, the service he was searching for, but to his surprise, he couldn’t find any in India.
This led to him setting up a transitional care facility by himself.
Porvoo Transition Care was started in 2019 in New Delhi. While Sudhanshu refrained from sharing the turnover figure, he says that since the inception, the company has seen a 3X growth.
Edited by Teja Lele
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