A pharmaceutical major will take over the India sales of two ‘waterless hygiene’ products developed by Delhi-based start-up, Clensta International. The pharmaceutical company will sell the products under its own brand name.
The start-up, in which IIT Delhi, has an equity stake, is a pioneer in ‘waterless’ products—you just spray the stuff over your head and body and that is as good as having had a bath.
Such products have many applications, such as in water-stressed regions, but mainly in hospitals where the only other option for patients is a ‘sponge bath’. “It does not clean the head and you dip the sponge in the same water over and over again,” Puneeth Gupta, CEO and Founder, Clensta, told Business Line.
Clensta will market these products abroad under its own brand name.
The start-up was founded in 2016 with a view to developing products based on ‘waterless technology’. It was supported by a ₹50-lakh grant of the Department of Science and Technology a couple of years ago. It has recently raised ₹5 crore through an NCD issue. It has produced a range of products, such as for washing clothes; a background note provided by Clensta says its products have saved 400 million litresof water.
The principle behind these products is, when a customer typically buys a hygiene product, such as a floor cleaner, he mostly buys water, because 95 per cent of the contents of the bottle he buys is water. Instead, if you sell only concentrates, it will avoid a lot of carbon footprint.
Ten more launches on June 5
Gupta said that on June 5, the World Environment Day, Clensta will launch ten products based on what it describes as ‘enhanced bio-activity degradation compressed’ (EBDC) technology. These are products for cleaning glass, floor, toilets, dishes, car shampoos, stain removers, room fresheners and pigeon repellents.
This marks Clensta’s foray into the B2C market, for which it is close to hiring “a few celebrities” as brand ambassadors, Gupta said.