Beardo and the Normalization of Men’s Grooming Routines

Industry & Competitive Context

India’s men’s grooming category evolved through the 2010s from a narrow set of shaving and deodorant products into a broader personal-care segment covering beard care, skincare, fragrance, and hair care. Investor commentary cited in Indian business press placed the men’s grooming market at approximately Rs 3,200 crore in 2016 and estimated it had grown to roughly Rs 10,000 crore by around 2020, though these figures originate from investor statements reported in the media rather than from an independently published third-party market-sizing study, and should be read with that caveat. Globally, market-research firms such as Allied Market Research have published forecasts for the specific beard-grooming sub-segment, projecting it to reach approximately $43.1 billion worldwide by 2026, growing at a compound annual rate of about 7.7%. No verified public information is available on a specific BCG- or McKinsey-branded market-sizing report dedicated to India’s men’s grooming sector; the figures used in this case therefore rely on investor and company disclosures reported by credible business media rather than global consulting-firm publications.

Within India, the category that emerged alongside Beardo included other digitally native, direct-to-consumer grooming brands such as The Man Company and Bombay Shaving Company, both of which were explicitly named as comparable online-first competitors in contemporaneous press coverage of Beardo’s early funding. These brands collectively represented a shift away from legacy FMCG players’ generic “unisex” or male-grooming sub-lines toward specialist brands built around a single male consumer identity, often combining content-led digital marketing with marketplace-first distribution before moving into general trade and modern retail.

Brand Situation Prior to the Campaign Period

Beardo was founded in Ahmedabad by Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah; public sources vary slightly on the exact founding date, with some citing late 2015 and others 2016, but consistently identify Ahmedabad as the base of operations. Ashutosh held a Master’s degree in International Business from Brunel University London and had earlier founded Aajkiitem, an e-commerce platform for lifestyle products and consumer electronics. Priyank held an MBA from IBS-Ahmedabad and had more than four years of experience in procurement and logistics. The two were already working together on their earlier e-commerce venture when their research into men’s lifestyle categories pointed them toward beard grooming, an area they identified as housing more than 25 million users in India at the time, within a market then estimated at around Rs 2,000 crore.

The founding insight articulated by Priyank Shah was straightforward: beard hair has different structural and care needs than scalp hair, so regular hair- or skin-care products were not well suited to it, creating room for dedicated beard-specific formulations. The founders also observed that young Indian men were increasingly willing to experiment with new grooming products, even though consumer education about why a man might need a separate “beard” product remained a challenge. Beardo’s initial product range included beard oil, beard wash, beard growth oil, moustache wax, and soap, largely built around natural ingredients, manufactured through contract manufacturers located in Punjab, Ahmedabad, Delhi, and Kanpur that the founders had access to through their prior e-commerce work. Distribution in the earliest phase ran through online marketplaces, specifically Amazon, Snapdeal, and Flipkart, with the company stating that close to three-quarters of its revenue came from online channels in the period around 2017, alongside early expansion into spas and salons.

Beardo’s funding history shows a progressive, staged validation of the model by outside capital. In September 2016, the company raised $500,000 in seed funding from Venture Catalysts and a group of individual investors, reported at the time at a valuation of roughly Rs 40 crore; actor Suniel Shetty was also an investor in the company. In March 2017, listed FMCG major Marico Limited acquired a 45% stake in Zed Lifestyle Private Limited, the entity operating Beardo, with the deal structured to be completed gradually over two years through a combination of primary capital infusion and secondary buyouts from existing shareholders; the financial terms of this transaction were not publicly disclosed. This made Beardo one of the earliest instances of a large listed Indian FMCG company taking a strategic minority stake in a digitally native, founder-led personal-care startup rather than building a competing brand internally.

Strategic Objective

Across the period following Marico’s initial investment, Beardo’s publicly stated marketing objectives, as articulated through company and leadership statements reported in trade press, centred on two related goals: expanding the addressable market for men’s grooming products by making grooming routines (not just shaving) a normal, unremarkable part of Indian masculinity, and building brand salience and aspirational appeal for a category that still required active consumer education. CEO Sujot Malhotra’s public statements around successive campaigns consistently returned to themes of self-expression, confidence, and “celebrating men’s attractiveness & style,” indicating that the brand’s marketing strategy was oriented less toward functional product claims alone and more toward reframing grooming as an identity-affirming behaviour for Indian men, including in contexts (such as workplaces) where visible grooming choices like beards had traditionally been discouraged or scrutinised.

Campaign Architecture & Execution

Beardo’s marketing program over the period documented in public sources consisted of a sequence of distinct, celebrity-fronted digital campaigns rather than a single sustained creative platform, each targeting a different facet of the “normalize grooming” objective.

In a campaign launched on January 25, 2021, titled “Arrival of Don Beardo,” the brand cast actor Hrithik Roshan as a character named “Don Beardo,” built to embody the brand’s values of polished style, self-assurance, and striking looks. The film opened with the line “Want to play God?” and was positioned by Hrithik, in brand communications, as encouraging viewers to be authentically themselves and to practise self-care. CEO Sujot Malhotra described the brand as “committed to celebrating men’s attractiveness & style” in comments accompanying the launch.

In August 2021, Beardo launched a fragrance campaign for its Whiskey Smoke Eau de Parfum (described in press coverage as featuring notes of Oud Wood, Tobacco, Cinnamon, and Vanilla), fronted by actors Chitrangada Singh and Kunal Kapoor. The campaign was reported under the framing that it “takes the oomph to new heights,” with Kunal Kapoor linking the brand to the image of a “dapper, successful man” and Chitrangada Singh stating on camera that the scent was what she wanted her partner to smell like. CEO Sujot Malhotra described the campaign concept as personality-driven, aspirational, and classy. No explicit, numerically stated business objective (such as a sales or awareness target) was disclosed in connection with this campaign.

The brand also ran a digital shampoo campaign featuring comedian and actor Vir Das, publicly reported under headlines built around the tagline “throw away your girlfriend’s shampoo,” positioning a dedicated men’s shampoo as distinct from, and preferable to, generic household or women’s shampoo products used by men by default. Beyond the headline framing and the format (a digital, humour-led film), no further verified details of this campaign’s objectives, media spend, or results are available in the public sources reviewed for this case.

A more directly category-normalizing initiative was the #BeardsAtWork campaign, launched around World Beard Day (September 2, 2023). This campaign explicitly targeted workplace grooming norms, specifically the practice of bearded candidates being asked to shave during campus placement processes. Its centrepiece was a digital film featuring comedian Hardik Banga, dramatizing a professor instructing students to shave or risk missing out on placements, with the students responding through comic excuses defending their beards. The film’s underlying argument, as reported, was that maintaining a well-groomed beard requires more effort than shaving it off, and that bearded candidates therefore deserved acceptance in professional settings rather than being pressured to conform. The campaign was amplified by influencers including BeYouNick, and actor and brand ambassador Hrithik Roshan also promoted it. CEO Sujot Malhotra was quoted stating the campaign’s intent directly: “We stand by the feeling that a beard should never stand as a barrier to professionalism,” framing the effort as one of breaking down stereotypes and celebrating individual expression.

In November 2023, Beardo executed a pre-launch activation built around actor Aditya Roy Kapur, ahead of formally announcing him as a brand ambassador. The activation used an unbranded out-of-home display at Juhu Beach in Mumbai, showing Aditya Roy Kapur in two looks clean-shaven and bearded with a QR code allowing the public to vote for their preferred look, deliberately withholding brand context at first to generate curiosity. After the poll period, Aditya Roy Kapur posted the results on his own social media, declaring the bearded look the audience’s preferred choice, which was then followed by a joint launch video on Instagram formally connecting him to Beardo. The stated purpose of the activation, per trade press coverage, was to reinforce Aditya Roy Kapur’s bearded look as his “consumer preferred persona” and to substantiate the brand’s rationale for signing him.

Across these campaigns, a consistent execution pattern is visible in the public record: each used a single well-known Bollywood or comedy-circuit personality as the anchor of a short-form digital film or activation, released primarily through digital and social channels, often timed to symbolic moments (a brand ambassador reveal, World Beard Day) rather than built as an always-on campaign.

Positioning & Consumer Insight

The consumer insight underlying Beardo’s communications, as evidenced in the brand’s own public statements, was that Indian men’s grooming choices and specifically the decision to keep or display a beard were frequently constrained by external social and professional expectations rather than personal preference, and that mainstream grooming marketing in India had historically treated male grooming as a female-adjacent or niche behaviour. Beardo’s positioning across its campaign history consistently reframed grooming (beard maintenance, fragrance, hair care) as an expression of individual identity, confidence, and personal charm, explicitly distancing men’s grooming products from being framed as borrowed or secondary versions of women’s products (as seen directly in the “throw away your girlfriend’s shampoo” framing) and explicitly contesting institutional pressure to conform to clean-shaven norms (as seen in the #BeardsAtWork campaign). The recurring use of established film actors Hrithik Roshan, Aditya Roy Kapur, Kunal Kapoor, Chitrangada Singh functioned as a credibility and aspiration mechanism, associating grooming behaviour with culturally admired figures rather than relying solely on functional product efficacy claims.

Media & Channel Strategy

Based on publicly available reporting, Beardo’s campaigns in this period were executed predominantly as digital-first initiatives: short branded films distributed via social media and digital platforms, supplemented in at least one documented instance (the Aditya Roy Kapur activation) by a physical out-of-home placement used as a teaser mechanism before digital amplification. Influencer amplification was used explicitly in the #BeardsAtWork campaign, with named creators such as BeYouNick participating alongside the brand’s own ambassador. No verified public information is available on Beardo’s television, print, or other traditional media spend allocation for these specific campaigns, nor on a precise, campaign-by-campaign media budget breakdown. What is disclosed at the company-financial level is an aggregate advertising cost of Rs 43.89 crore for FY24, reported as a “steady” year-on-year figure in that year’s regulatory filings, though this figure covers the brand’s overall advertising expenditure for the year rather than being broken out by individual campaign.

Distribution channel strategy evolved from Beardo’s online-marketplace-first model (Amazon, Snapdeal, Flipkart, alongside salons and spas) in its early years toward a broader retail footprint over time, consistent with its integration into Marico’s distribution infrastructure following full acquisition, though no verified public figures quantify the exact online-versus-offline revenue split in the brand’s more recent fiscal years.

Business & Brand Outcomes

Beardo’s financial trajectory, as disclosed through Registrar of Companies filings reported by business media, shows a multi-year pattern of revenue growth accompanied by a return to profitability after a loss-making year. In FY23, the company (then still operating as Zed Lifestyle Private Limited) reported revenue from operations of Rs 106.6 crore and a net loss of Rs 6.1 crore. In FY24, revenue rose to Rs 173.2 crore, a year-on-year increase reported as 62.4%, with the company returning to profitability, posting a profit of Rs 3.63 crore. That year’s filings also disclosed a product procurement cost of Rs 67.5 crore (up 83.2% from Rs 36.8 crore in FY23, and described as roughly 40% of total expenditure), an advertising cost of Rs 43.89 crore, an employee benefit cost of Rs 12.5 crore, total expenditure of Rs 168.4 crore (up 46.1% from Rs 115.3 crore in FY23), a return on capital employed of 75.58%, and an EBITDA margin of 4.21%.

In FY25, Zed Lifestyle’s turnover was reported at Rs 214.17 crore, with the company’s net worth standing at Rs 18.61 crore at that point, and profit reported at approximately Rs 13 crore. In FY26, revenue from operations rose further to Rs 299 crore, a reported year-on-year increase of approximately 40%, with total income of Rs 300 crore (including Rs 1 crore of other income) and profit after tax of Rs 22.12 crore, up roughly 70% year-on-year from the prior year’s profit.

A significant corporate development occurred when Marico announced the integration of Zed Lifestyle, the Beardo operating entity and by then a wholly owned subsidiary, directly into the parent company through a voluntary liquidation process, transferring the entire business undertaking to Marico. The company described this as an “intra-group restructuring exercise aimed at improving operational efficiencies,” citing expected operational synergies and more efficient resource allocation, with Zed Lifestyle’s turnover at the time of the announcement representing approximately 1.98% of Marico’s consolidated revenue. The article reporting this integration gave no further public commentary on Beardo’s brand-level growth or profitability beyond the disclosed turnover and net worth figures.

Strategic Implications

Several patterns can be reasonably drawn from the verified public record without extending into speculation about undisclosed internal metrics. First, Beardo’s growth path illustrates a staged capital strategy common among Indian digitally native brands of its era: bootstrap-adjacent seed funding from angel and syndicate investors, followed by a strategic FMCG incumbent taking a minority stake with an option structure for gradual majority acquisition, followed eventually by full ownership and, later, full operational absorption into the parent’s corporate structure. This progression Marico’s 45% stake in 2017, full acquisition via the remaining 55% stake in 2020, and the voluntary-liquidation integration announced more recently suggests that Beardo’s value to Marico evolved from that of an independent growth bet into an integrated brand within Marico’s broader male grooming and personal-care portfolio, a path consistent with Marico’s stated objective of operational efficiency rather than brand-building.

Second, Beardo’s communications strategy demonstrates a deliberate and sustained use of celebrity-fronted storytelling to perform category education and category normalization simultaneously using well-known film and comedy personalities not merely for reach, but to model and legitimize behaviours (keeping a beard at work, using a dedicated men’s shampoo, wearing a distinct masculine fragrance) that the brand’s own leadership explicitly framed as previously stigmatized or overlooked. The #BeardsAtWork campaign in particular shows the brand moving beyond product-level messaging into a more explicit social-commentary register, directly engaging an institutional norm (campus placement grooming expectations) rather than only promoting product attributes.

Third, the financial results disclosed through regulatory filings the return to profitability in FY24 after a loss in FY23, followed by continued revenue growth and improving profit margins through FY25 and FY26 indicate that whatever combination of marketing, distribution, and operational changes Marico implemented following full ownership coincided with an improving financial trajectory, though the public record does not allow this case to attribute that improvement specifically to the marketing campaigns described, as opposed to other factors such as distribution expansion, cost efficiencies, or broader category tailwinds. Readers and students should treat the correlation between the campaign timeline and the financial trajectory as suggestive context rather than demonstrated causation, given the absence of campaign-specific performance data in the public domain.

Discussion Questions

1. Beardo’s campaign history shows a shift from product-education messaging (explaining why beard hair needs distinct products) toward social-norm messaging (#BeardsAtWork directly challenging workplace grooming expectations). What risks and opportunities does this shift from functional to socio-cultural positioning carry for a personal-care brand, and at what point in a category’s lifecycle is this shift typically justified?

2. Marico’s relationship with Beardo evolved from a 45% strategic stake (2017) to full acquisition (2020) to full operational integration via voluntary liquidation into the parent entity (announced more recently). What does this progression suggest about how large FMCG incumbents manage acquired digitally native brands over time, and what trade-offs exist between preserving a founder-led brand’s distinct identity and capturing integration efficiencies?

3. Beardo consistently used film and comedy-circuit celebrities (Hrithik Roshan, Aditya Roy Kapur, Chitrangada Singh, Kunal Kapoor, Vir Das) rather than category experts or user-generated content as its primary campaign device. Given the absence of publicly disclosed campaign-level performance data, how should a marketing team evaluate whether celebrity-led storytelling is the right investment relative to other possible approaches for a category still undergoing adoption?

4. The #BeardsAtWork campaign directly confronted an institutional practice (shaving requirements in campus placements) rather than only promoting product benefits. What criteria should a brand use to decide when engaging directly with a social or institutional norm is additive to its commercial objectives versus a distraction from them?

5. Beardo’s disclosed financials show advertising expenditure of approximately Rs 43.89 crore in FY24 against revenue of Rs 173.2 crore that year, alongside a return to profitability. Without campaign-level attribution data, what alternative frameworks could a marketing leader use internally to assess the productivity of brand-building spend of this nature, and what are the limitations of relying solely on year-over-year revenue growth as a proxy for marketing effectiveness?