Startup Deep Dive : Beardo — the beard-oil brand where beards now drive under a tenth of sales

Beardo was built to sell beard oil to men who had almost nowhere to buy it. By the year to March 2025, beard products were no longer even its main business: hair styling, perfumes and skincare together brought in more than 90% of a ₹214 crore ($22.3 million) topline, according to the company’s regulatory filings summarised by Entrackr.

That is the quiet contradiction at the centre of Beardo. Two friends from Ahmedabad, Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah, started the brand with roughly ₹3 crore of their own working capital, created a category that barely existed in India, and sold the whole thing to FMCG major Marico in a deal industry trackers estimate at ₹350–400 crore. The brand that made “beard” a shelf category in Indian retail now earns most of its money everywhere except the beard.

Quick facts

What Beardo does

Beardo is a direct-to-consumer men’s grooming brand that sells personal care products to Indian men, mostly younger urban buyers, through its own website, online marketplaces such as Amazon and Flipkart, and increasingly through physical retail. It began with beard oil, beard wash, wax and combs, and has since widened into hair styling, perfumes, skincare, bathing and shaving. Its parent, Marico, folds it into the same portfolio as Parachute, Saffola and Livon.

• Core categories today: hair styling, perfumes and skincare, which together account for more than 90% of turnover (FY25, per company filings via Entrackr).
• Channels: own D2C site, third-party marketplaces, and general and modern trade retail (company-stated).
• Positioning: mass-premium men’s grooming, priced above unbranded local products but below international prestige brands.

The origin

The founding insight was narrow and specific: Indian men were growing beards, and there was almost nothing made to look after one. Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah had already run an online reselling venture, aajkiitem.com, which sourced products and sold them on large marketplaces. That gave them a working knowledge of e-commerce logistics, pricing and customer acquisition before they ever mixed a bottle of beard oil.

They noticed that regular hair or skin products were not built for facial hair, and that the men who cared about their beards were exactly the sort of self-conscious, image-aware buyers who would try something new online. So they built a brand around a single grooming ritual that nobody else in India was serving at scale. The hard part was not the product; it was persuading customers that beard care was a thing they needed to spend on at all. Marico, when it later described the business, called men’s grooming a market growing at a double-digit annual rate off a base it then put at roughly ₹3,200 crore.

The struggle years

Two things make the Beardo story less tidy than the exit headline suggests. The first is how thinly it was capitalised at the start. The founders put in only about ₹3 crore of working capital and leaned on their e-commerce experience rather than on a war chest. There was no category to inherit; they had to teach the market what beard oil even was, one Instagram post and one repeat order at a time.

The second is that profitability did not hold once the brand became a growth engine inside a larger company. Even after Marico took full control, Beardo’s operating entity, Zed Lifestyle, slipped into the red:

• FY23: revenue of ₹106.6 crore but a net loss of ₹6.1 crore, as the business spent to grow (MCA filings via Inc42 and Entrackr).
• Heavy marketing was the pressure point: advertising and promotion stayed high relative to sales while the brand pushed into new categories.
• The pivot away from beard-only products was itself a forced adaptation. Beard grooming is a small, seasonal niche; to keep growing, Beardo had to become a broader men’s care brand, which meant competing head-on with larger players in hair and skin.

The turning point

The clean turning point is the sale itself, and the numbers on either side of it are stark. When the founders started, they had put in about ₹3 crore. When Marico completed its full buyout in 2020, trackers estimated the total value of the two-stage acquisition at ₹350–400 crore, against Beardo’s net sales of roughly ₹80 crore in FY20. That is the moment a bootstrapped niche brand became an FMCG asset.

Marico did it in two steps rather than one. In March 2017 it agreed to acquire a 45% equity stake in Zed Lifestyle, to be built up over about two years through a mix of fresh investment and buying out existing holders. In 2020 it bought the remaining 55% in an all-cash deal, taking Beardo to 100% ownership. For the founders and early backers, the second step was the exit; for Marico, it was the point at which a digital-first brand became a permanent part of its shelf.

The money behind it

Beardo was never a heavily venture-funded company. A small early cheque, two well-known angel investors and then a strategic acquirer did most of the work. The shape of the cap table at exit is the story:

• Venture Catalysts — invested about ₹2.5 crore in 2016 for a 1.63% stake; estimated exit value of ₹14–16 crore (Entrackr estimate).
• Kunal Bahl and Rohit Kumar Bansal, the Snapdeal co-founders — together put in ₹50 lakh in 2016 as angels.
• Marico Limited — the strategic buyer: 45% in 2017, then the remaining 55% by 2020, for a total estimated at ₹350–400 crore (Fintrackr estimate; the parties did not disclose the price).
• Founders — Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah each held roughly 22% at exit; their combined proceeds were estimated at ₹150–180 crore (Entrackr estimate).

The economics of that outcome are unusual for Indian consumer startups of the era: a return built on a tiny amount of invested capital rather than repeated large rounds. After the exit, both founders went on to co-build RENÉE Cosmetics, a women’s beauty brand that reported revenue of ₹191.65 crore in FY24, showing the acquisition was a springboard rather than an ending.

How it makes money

Beardo makes money the way most branded personal-care businesses do: it buys or contract-manufactures products, marks them up as a brand, and sells them across owned and third-party channels. The interesting part is where the margin does and does not sit.

• Money in: product sales across the D2C website, marketplaces and retail; premium pricing versus unbranded alternatives.
• Biggest cost — materials: cost of materials consumed was ₹94 crore in FY25, up 39.3% year on year, the single largest line and a squeeze on gross margin.
• Second cost — advertising: ad spend was ₹52 crore in FY25 (₹43.89 crore in FY24). For a D2C brand, customer acquisition is a structural, recurring cost, not a one-off.
• People: employee benefit expense was relatively light at ₹14 crore in FY25 (₹12.5 crore in FY24), reflecting an asset-light, outsourced-manufacturing model.
• The part people get wrong: the profit lever was not price but discipline. In FY25 total expenses grew 17.3% to ₹197 crore, slower than the topline, and that operating leverage — not a margin miracle — drove the profit jump.

The numbers

Zed Lifestyle’s three most recent reported years show the arc: a loss-making FY23, a return to profit in FY24, and a sharp step-up in FY25. All figures are revenue from operations and profit/loss after tax, in ₹ crore, from MCA filings summarised by Entrackr and Inc42.

• Revenue grew 62.4% in FY24 and a further 23.7% in FY25 (Entrackr).
• Profit after tax jumped about 3.6x in FY25, from ₹3.63 crore to ₹13 crore.
• EBITDA margin more than doubled to 7.1% in FY25 from 3.4% in FY24 (Entrackr).
• Return on capital employed was reported at 57% for FY25 and 75.58% for FY24 — very high, reflecting the asset-light model and a small capital base.
• Total assets stood at ₹72 crore at end-FY25, up 44%.

Where the money comes from

The surprise sits here. A brand whose name is a play on “beard” now earns the large majority of its revenue from categories that have little to do with beards.

• Hair styling, perfumes and skincare together contribute more than 90% of turnover (FY25, company filings via Entrackr).
• Beard-specific products — the founding category — are now a minority of sales, a structural shift the brand made to keep growing beyond a niche.
• Channels span the owned D2C site, marketplaces and physical retail; the business no longer relies solely on the online-only model it started with (company-stated).
• Inside Marico, Beardo is small but material: Zed Lifestyle’s ₹214.17 crore turnover was about 1.98% of Marico’s consolidated revenue, per Marico’s February 2026 restructuring disclosure.

The risks

Three concrete risks stand out, each with a clear mechanism:

• Category drift dilutes the moat. Beardo’s original edge was owning a niche nobody else served. In hair, perfume and skincare it competes with far larger and better-funded brands, including Marico’s own and rivals such as Bombay Shaving Company, The Man Company and mass FMCG lines. Winning there depends on marketing spend, not category ownership — which is why advertising remains a ₹52 crore annual cost.
• Marketing dependence caps margin. Profitability improved because expenses grew slower than sales, but advertising still runs above a fifth of revenue. If customer-acquisition costs rise or growth slows, the thin EBITDA margin (7.1% in FY25) can compress quickly, as the FY23 loss showed.
• Loss of independence and identity. On 10 February 2026 Marico announced it would voluntarily liquidate Zed Lifestyle and transfer the entire business into the parent, citing operational synergies. That may improve efficiency, but it also ends Beardo’s separate corporate existence and folds a founder-built brand fully into a large FMCG machine, where its distinct D2C identity could fade.

The takeaway

Beardo’s transferable lesson is about owning a category before you defend a niche. The founders did not out-spend anyone; they identified a specific, unserved grooming ritual, used cheap e-commerce distribution to reach the exact buyers who cared, and built a recognisable brand on roughly ₹3 crore. That created enough value for a strategic buyer to pay a multiple of net sales for it. The harder, less romantic second lesson is that a niche is a starting point, not a business: to keep growing, Beardo had to leave the very category it invented, and most of its money now comes from products its name never promised. Category creation gets you noticed; category expansion is what you have to survive.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns Beardo?

Beardo is a brand owned by Zed Lifestyle Private Limited, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marico Limited. Marico bought 45% in 2017 and the remaining 55% by 2020, taking it to 100% ownership.

Who founded Beardo and when?

Beardo was founded by Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah in Ahmedabad. Marico’s 2017 disclosure dates the founding to June 2016, and the brand’s first products appeared around 2015. The pair had earlier run an e-commerce venture, aajkiitem.com.

How much did Marico pay for Beardo?

The parties did not disclose the price. Industry trackers estimate the total value of the two-stage acquisition (2017 and 2020 combined) at ₹350–400 crore.

Is Beardo profitable?

Yes, currently. Zed Lifestyle posted a net loss of ₹6.1 crore in FY23, returned to profit with ₹3.63 crore in FY24, and reported ₹13 crore profit after tax on ₹214 crore revenue in FY25.

Does Beardo still mainly sell beard products?

No. As of FY25, hair styling, perfumes and skincare together account for more than 90% of Beardo’s turnover, so beard-specific products are now a minority of sales.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Entrackr — “Beardo revenue tops Rs 200 Cr in FY25; profit jumps 3.6X” (FY25 revenue, PAT, EBITDA margin, ROCE, expenses, category mix), August 2026.
• Entrackr — “Beardo crosses Rs 170 Cr revenue in FY24; regains profitability” (FY24 and FY23 revenue and profit/loss, advertising and employee costs, ROCE), November 2024.
• Entrackr — “Category creator Beardo’s Rs 350 Cr exit story built with Rs 3 Cr investment” (founding capital, cap table, investor stakes and estimated proceeds, FY20 net sales), July 2020.
• Storyboard18 — “Marico integrates Rs 214-crore Beardo business into parent” (February 2026 merger via voluntary liquidation, ₹214.17 crore turnover, 1.98% of Marico revenue, net worth), February 2026.
• Marico Limited — press release and disclosures on the 45% stake in Zed Lifestyle Private Limited (2017 acquisition terms, market size context), March 2017.
• YourStory — “FMCG major Marico acquires Ahmedabad-based men’s grooming startup Beardo” (full acquisition of remaining 55%), July 2020.
• Inc42 — Beardo company profile and “Marico-Owned Beardo Slips Into The Red, Posts INR 6.1 Cr Loss In FY23” (FY23 loss), and “The RENÉE Makeover” (founders’ next venture, RENÉE FY24 revenue), 2024–2026.
• Tracxn — Zed Lifestyle Private Limited legal-entity profile (entity confirmation), 2026.

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