In the mood for a brain-teaser?
Imagine this – you’ve launched a D2C brand in a category where your primary competitors have been household names since the last 5 decades.
Not just that –
🔹 You grew up watching and vibing on their TV ads
🔹 They sell almost across EVERY pincode in India
🔹 They’d cracked distribution, logistics, and supply chain even before you were born
Seems difficult, no?
Now tell us – will you think of building a D2C brand in such a scenario?
No, right?
Well, Jatan Bawa had a different opinion – an opinion which led to the birth of Perfora!
When Jatan launched Perfora in 2021, he didn’t pack and run. Rather, with grit and resilience, he took a stand to face behemoths like Colgate, Dabur, Vicco, and …. you tell us – which brand do you use for your oral care?
And, in just 3 years, his brand is clocking an impressive revenue of INR 70 Cr.
Without any more shenanigans, let’s dive straight into how Jatan scaled Perfora!
The Inception Of Perfora: A Cold Mail & A Pre-Launch Funding Round!
From the very onset of Perfora, Jatan was an informed founder – he knew the journey wouldn’t be easy without capital.
Therefore, he reached out to Manu Chandra, Managing Partner of Sauce.vc – a consumer VC fund that, over the years, has built a reputation for writing cheques in pre-launch phase and early-stage FMCG startups.
Surprisingly, Manu responded to the email in less than an hour, and summoned a meeting with Jatan the following week.
Jatan, of course, nailed the pitch and secured an INR 2 Cr pre-seed cheque. A miraculous advent, we must say!
The Founders’ Frugal Mindset – Never Put All The Eggs In One Basket!
Now, Jatan had funds, much needed ones. But, his humble background did not let him shoot up his marketing spend just for the sake of flamboyance.
In a session at D2CX by Inc42, he gleamed, “I was against the idea of onboarding a big-shot celebrity for the launch campaign of Perfora. My reservation was simple – if the campaign didn’t perform as well as planned, my runway would be at near-end!”
Crazy, Crazy First Year Of Perfora!
What Jatan did instead was build organic traction – a ballsy move, but effective! They made INR 1.5 Cr in the first year of sales, but somewhat broke the monotony of legacy brands!
How?
Combing Through Consumer Mindset
In the pre-launch phase, Jatan reached out to 4-5 potential customers from his TG every day, and figured out purchase patterns. These conversations revealed:
🔹 Building trust is paramount to crack oral-care
🔹 New-age consumers are more than willing to try out a new brand, only if they resonate with the brand story, and believe in the product and vision of founders
Establishing Trust Through A Transparent Brand Building Ethos
As a new-age and small brand, Perfora could ‘build the brand in public’ – something its competitors could not. Through blogs, a Sunday newsletter, and marketing on social media, Jatan disclosed the manufacturing process, steps followed in quality checks – basically, why consumers should pick Perfora over other brands!
Grabbing Low-Hanging Fruits
As initial traction picked momentum, there was an innate need for personalised electric toothbrushes and tooth-whitening solutions. So, they quickly launched these products, focusing on personalisation, design, and product experience.
As Jatan puts it, “We are here for the long haul. I want to ensure Perfora lasts for decades and for that the fundamentals, brand ethos, and brand sentiment simply can’t go wrong!”
And when you look at Perfora’s growth playbook, this mindset is pretty evident!
Brand Marketing 101: Actionable Insights Through Feedback Calls Conversations!
Not feedback calls but conversations, as Jatan puts it! Every day, the team schedules calls with consumers to mine consumption patterns, and ask the following questions:
🔹 How did they discover Perfora?
🔹 What was the core thought behind purchasing a product from Perfora?
🔹 What was the product experience on a scale of 1 to 10?
Insights from these conversations help them get fresh perspectives and discover what’s lacking.
Metrics, OKRs, KPIs
Although not very bullish on keeping track of retention rates, Jatan kept a track of the following to scale Perfora:
🔹 NPS score – to understand how customers are perceiving the brand
🔹 Share of absolute organic revenue – to channelise performance marketing efforts
🔹 Brand searches – to evaluate if the brand has established presence
🔹 CAC – to optimise overall marketing strategy
Cracking Quick Commerce
Perfora got listed in quick-commerce marketplaces in early 2023. But, Jatan shares a strategy that today’s emerging D2C brands can follow to avoid queues for quick-commerce listings.
🔹 Create a strong organic brand pull
🔹 Be known as a brand that innovates products, time and again
🔹 Generate latent demand for the brand
Frugal-Yet-Effective Marketing Efforts
It’s amazing how frugality simply got embedded into the DNA of Perfora. While they can afford to go all out, the brand still prefers to market the brand than its products.
Whenever they collaborate with influencers or affiliate marketers, they focus on the brand story and quality of content that goes out. And, customers simply love this.
Remember when we mentioned the importance of making customers associate with the brand – it all comes down to this!
Leveraging User Generated Content
One of the craziest initiatives by Perfora was to drive organic pull through UGC on e-commerce marketplaces. This is again where understanding consumer mindset came in handy for the brand.
Customers would get a gift hamper with miniature Perfora products for every review! Most Perfora products are rated 4 and above out of 5 on Amazon, and this subtle initiative is contributing to 35% of their overall revenue!
With this growth playbook, Perfora clocked INR 70 Cr in the last fiscal. Now, that’s close to 50X growth, compared to their first year of sales!
It’ll be interesting to see how Perfora scales in the years to come. Will it outpace brands like Colgate and Peposdent? Fingers crossed!